Trump tastes his own bitter medicine
Even if Watersportsgate is proved false, this is poetic justice for a man who won the presidency via post-truths and fake news
Yesterday the internet, and more specifically social media, was abuzz with the alleged claims that America’s president-elect, Donald J. Trump, had paid prostitutes in Russia to urinate on a hotel bed that was once used by President Barack Obama. It was further intimated that there was video and audio recordings that corroborated this version of events, and that these recordings were being used by Russian security services to blackmail Trump into doing their bidding. Once the former reality star and property tycoon was inaugurated, he would be a present day Manchurian candidate working for and reporting to Putin.
In the same dossier, which was reportedly created by ex-MI6 spy Christopher Steele, who now fronts a private investigation firm Orbis Business Intelligence, it also details Trump’s alleged financial involvement in Russian businesses which might create serious conflicts of interest when he assumes his role in the White House.
Of course — of course! — the latter sounds much more credible, and actually would be much more serious moving forwards. These conflicting business ties could help sway Trump to reshape America’s decades long commitments to Nato and countries vulnerable to Russia’s influence in Eastern Europe, such as the small and militarily meek Baltic states. If Trump abandons these commitments to these countries, which have significant Russian minorities, they could well fall victim to Putin’s burgeoning irredentism.
But naturally this has largely been ignored in favour of the humorous idea that Trump takes part in urine-based debauchery. For once the bully, the bigot, and the sexual predator, is the brunt of the jokes, the snide comments, the humiliation. After the dejection and despair following Trump’s shock election win, liberal citizens of the world get a chance to fight back, even if it is just on social media with tweets and Facebook posts. Perhaps, with this scandal, Trump might not even make it to the White House. Perhaps decent, liberal citizens can be spared a backwards facing and borderline fascist America.
But, at a time when it is so important to counter the rise of post-truth politics and fake news, should news organisations like BuzzFeed be publishing unverified claims like this, even if it is coming from a seemingly credible source, and even if it does provide readers with some sweet schadenfreude?
Probably not.
But it does seem rather poetic that a man who relied so heavily on fake news and outright lies to gain the presidency should be forced to taste his own bitter medicine. And it makes you wonder what would have happened if these claims had been made public earlier.
Would Hillary Clinton have had a better chance on a more level playing field, where Trump’s post-truths were countered by smears like this one? But then he already survived a whole host of other scandals, that would have felled any almost any other candidate. But perhaps, perhaps, it would have been enough to turn the tide, and Hillary would have won the electoral college vote just like she won the popular vote.
We’ll never really know for sure.
But what is most worrying is the idea, the possibility, that these claims could have an element of truth to them, and the next president of the United States of America, and the world’s most powerful man, might be beholden to Russia and its president Vladimir Putin. A real-life Manchurian candidate that will enact major foreign policy decisions based on the will of a foreign tyrant. For the rest of Nato, and especially those Eastern European nations that share a border with the old empire, that really is a terrifying thought.
