When right-wing America watched Glenn Greenwald’s sex video
A gay journalist friendly to Republicans startles his audience
One of the bigger stories of the Trump era in politics has been a range of gay activists and journalists aligning with right-wing America. It’s been at times a queasy alliance.
Take Glenn Greenwald. The former left-wing firebrand most famous for reporting on the Edward Snowden leaks in 2013, realized afterward that Republican audiences were more receptive to his work. He became a regular presence in right-wing media.
The alliance was deeply tested on May 30th, 2025 when a startling video began circulating on social media.
A drama happened over several hours.
First, the video was posted to X from an anon account—and Greenwald himself re-posted it. What was on the video? The set-up seems to have been that a male escort in Brazil came over to have Greenwald, dressed in a mini-skirt and some kind of mesh top that reminded some of a maid.
Greenwald paid some attention to the man’s feet, then paid him around $1,750 in Brazilian money, apparently as a demonstration of subservience.
Then, Greenwald un-posted it from his X feed.
But the video was becoming the talk of social media. Other details were noticed.
“He also licks the guys spit off the floor.”
“Don’t forget mirror with meth pipe and meth on the bed”
Hours later, the video was being scrubbed by censors, and many who had even commented on it were put on temporary suspensions. It was even deleted from Rumble, the so-called “free speech” site—where Greenwald is a regular. Though it’s still there, here and there.
It was an interesting development for the journalist who is most famous for reporting on leaks?
A Reddit commentator noted:
“It’s largely schadenfreude that a person who made his career leaking nonconsensually obtained private information, some of it extremely dubiously sourced, is now angry about his own private information getting leaked.”
Right-wing America then found itself watching a gay, BDSM, fetish video with Glenn and his ‘dom’.
Was it really a ‘sex video’?
The video seems to mostly have featured Greenwald in some kind of entranced state. Maybe there was more. Greenwald quickly posted a statement about the matter, and referred to multiple videos.
“I have no embarrassment or regret about them,” he said, though defining the publication as ‘criminal’. He added: “Though we do not yet know exactly who is responsible, we are close to knowing, and the motive was a maliciously political one.”
He didn’t know who posted the videos but he knew what the motive was? I wondered what journalistic skills made that possible.
Lots of talk was flowing about the “motive” of the leaker.
If I had to guess at who leaked the video and why, it would be the escort who had been prompted to humiliate Greenwald in a session and was now finishing the job. But many theories were floating in social media spaces about what political interests—America, Israel, whoever—had done it.
Still, it was unavoidable that Greenwald’s new audience had to think about the sexual information. Was a man given to gay fetish scenes with a black dom—eating his spit, kissing his feet—a great reporter of right-wing reality?
The stars of conservative Christian media that have embraced Greenwald had to make a statement.
And one by one, they prompted their audiences to disregard the ‘leaked’ video. Even as reliably Evangelical a figure as Charlie Kirk claimed it was all just a private matter.
Some in Republican media space the opportunity to advance a new standard of right-wing discourse.
Maybe sexual expressions that do not harm anyone, and that are ‘consensual’, are all right?
But this isn’t usual right-wing talk.
Many conservatives had to think about how they viewed gay sexuality.
Some may never have seen any kind of scene like…that. How to process the problem of a man who seemed reasonable and intelligent putting himself in this situation?
There were some different takes.
Many were willing to give Greenwald some leeway, this just being “gay man things.”
That seems to have been a popular reaction.
“He’s a gay man doing gay man things in private. He never sold himself as anything different.”
But the right had mocked and cancelled so many people, so many times, for outré sexual behavior. Why not Glenn Greenwald?
Some were declaring Greenwald’s “degeneracy” made him unfit for right-wing consumption.
A lot of colorful commentary in that vein was flowing. It was just such a different impression of him. His ‘journalist’ self was just a persona, many realized. He was capable of others. One person commented:
“I’m trying so hard to see past that video, but the demonic eyes and meth pipe really bother me more than the sexual deviance.”
That he was the father of two sons was noted.
A lot of talk about that ensued. And the oddness of Greenwald himself re-posting the video was mulled.
The Evangelical influencer Allie Beth Stuckey had a theory about that.
“I think he was knowingly recorded and that the release of the recording is part of the humiliation fetish that he’s clearly into. To me, this is fairly obvious. Which makes the widespread defense of him even more bizarre”
But wasn’t it just ordinary human behavior?
That was Greenwald’s take, as he came back with a long social media post that argued that he was really no different from Donald Trump having been married three times. As he wrote:
Serious thoughtful question: how have you been able to separate what you regard as Donald Trump’s inspired and noble political leadership from the repeated behaviors in his private life long considered deeply immoral and degenerate under the most widespread and long-standing Christian and Western moral dogma: Overlapping affairs and marriages, serial adulteries, affairs with porn stars that he paid to cover up, closely cavorting with Jeffrey Epstein after he was publicly convicted of sex trafficking of minors, boasting of “grabbing womens’ pussies” without asking, and I could go on and on.
Who was Glenn Greenwald?
Some efforts were underway to talk about his life before his right-wing fame. He’d been a lawyer with some involvement in the porn industry, and an interest in Brazilian men. He moved to Brazil and married one, David Miranda. Articles in Portugese about his life there were circulating.
What to make of all the details?
“David worked as a sex worker during sunny afternoons in Rio de Janeiro. With the money from his sex work, he was able to rent an apartment in Copacabana, a place he shared with transvestites who helped him distribute cocaine and ecstasy in gay clubs and on the streets.”
It was a strange day in right-wing America.
And then it was over. The video was (mostly) swept out of sight. The talk of ‘privacy’ (mostly) prevailed—for now?
The message seemed to be: ‘Do whatever you want—just keep it hidden.’ 🔶
