| | | Lots of very reputable people are talking and they’re saying Donald Trump donated to NAMBLA
In Politics by Drew Salisbury / August 8, 2016
It seems like everywhere on the internet, lots of people are talking about whether Donald Trump donated money to the North American Man-Boy Love Association and is refusing to release his tax returns out of fear he’ll be outed as a closeted pedophile. It’s all over Twitter. Google Trends registered a sharp spike in people searching for the term “Trump and NAMBLA” over the weekend, after questions about the candidate’s refusal to release were raised in a discussion on reddit:
But why doesn’t Trump want to release his [tax returns]? Could it be because he donated a sizable amount of money to NAMBLA and he wants to cover it up? I’m not saying Trump donated money to NAMBLA, but people are saying that. It’s something I’ve heard, but I don’t believe Donald Trump donated several million dollars to NAMBLA over the last several years. Still, if he did that would be a great reason to not release his tax returns. But look, I’m not here to say whether or not Donald Trump donated millions to NAMBLA, I’m just here to let you know that every candidate has released his tax returns over the last 40 years, so there has to be a reason he doesn’t, and several very smart people are saying he contributed millions of dollars to NAMBLA.
Does that sound familiar? Not the accusation itself, but the way it was worded? It sounds an awful lot like how Trump himself responded to accusations last September that President Obama was a Muslim and “not a real American.”
“You know, a lot of people are saying that, and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there,” Trump said. “We’re going to look at that and plenty of other things.”
Or after the Orlando shooting, when Trump suggested the President may be condoning terrorism:
“Well, there are a lot of people that think maybe he doesn’t want to get it. A lot of people think maybe he doesn’t want to know about it. I happen to think that he just doesn’t know what he’s doing, but there are many people that think maybe he doesn’t want to get it. He doesn’t want to see what’s really happening. And that could be.”
Or when he spoke about whether U.S. negotiators has the country’s best interests in mind while working on the Iran nuclear deal:
“Some people say it’s worse than stupidity. There’s something going on that we don’t know about. And you almost think — I’m not saying that, and I’m not a conspiracy person. .?.?. Half the people in this room are saying it. I’m trying to be — you know, I’m just hoping they’re just stupid people, okay?”
Of course, despite Trump’s insistence that he is “not a conspiracy person,” those are all, in fact, conspiracies. So is the allegation that Trump is a NAMBLA member. It doesn’t have any basis in reality, but that’s not the point, as stated by the rumor’s originator.
According to The Daily Beast, Reddit user J Peterman created a bot that would respond to any comment mentioning “tax returns” on the subreddit EnoughTrumpSpam with the NAMBLA accusation. “Speaking of tax returns, did you hear Donald Trump is refusing to release them because Donald Trump has donated to NAMBLA? That’s what all the best sources, the most tremendous sources are saying,” AutoModerator would post.
“I thought to do it because, well, I thought it’d be a good laugh,” J. Peterman said.
“If you think about it, this is exactly how Trump works,” said Faiz, a moderator on the subreddit where the bot first appeared. “He stirs up as much smoke as he possibly can to convince people that there is fire.”
“If I kept repeating the phrase ‘Donald Trump donated to NAMBLA’ every time tax returns was mentioned, which is often,” J. Peterman added. “Google might pick up on it as a hot phrase.”
And pick up on it Google did, after dozens of Reddit users created new threads about the rumor and started posting it elsewhere on the internet, like BuzzFeed Community pages. One person even created an entire fake Fox News web page to host an article with the headline “NAMBLA neither confirms nor denies Trump’s donation allegations.”
It’s a skeevy lowbrow tactic, to be sure, but one that the candidate has brought entirely upon himself. As noted by Faiz and J. Peterman, the hoax caught fire for the same reason the birther movement, of which Trump was a very active member, did in the early days of Obama’s presidency.
“Maybe that’s right, maybe that’s wrong, but I don’t know why he doesn’t he release his records. Why doesn’t he release [them]?”
“A lot of people are questioning [them]. There are some major questions here and the press doesn’t wanna cover it. The press just refuses to cover it.”
Those aren’t quotes from the bot. That’s Trump talking about Obama’s birth certificate in 2011 and 2012. The rumors so successfully permeated the ether that the president was forced to release a copy of his birth certificate not once, but twice, in order to get people to shut up about it. We can’t say for sure whether Trump will respond to these NAMBLA allegations. All we can say is, until he does, it certainly seems like it could be a legitimate reason for his not releasing his returns. That’s what a lot of people are saying, anyway. |
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