Trump supporters gather outside courthouse and ask: Who among us hasn’t paid for sex?
Donald Trump has not been accused of paying for sex, but several supporters protesting outside of his trial on Monday wanted to make it clear that they have. It seems the crowds that come out to protest the persecution of the former president are getting smaller, and weirder
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Today, however, the crowd had thinned to a handful of true believers and true characters – those who don’t leave their house without a giant flag, a bullhorn, and an offensive T-shirt they made themselves.
It’s not only that the crowds are getting smaller, it’s that they are getting significantly weirder.
Of the people willing to step up to a microphone outside the courthouse and defend Mr Trump for allegedly paying off a porn star to hide his alleged affair from prospective voters, two offered something of a wild defence: that they opposed the charges because they too had paid for sex on more than one occasion, and assumed most men had done the same.
It didn’t matter to them that Mr Trump is not being accused of paying for sex, but rather accused of having embarked on several extra-marital affairs and falsifying business records over payments made to hide those affairs from the voting public in 2016.
Well, let’s legalize prostitution. Regulate it, tax it, legitimize it.
Conservatives: hell no, we can’t have that depravity and vice. We need to punish women for sex outside of marriage. Oh, yeah…and no abortions for them either. (Unless it’s my daughter or mistress)
Also conservatives: Yeah, we still pay for sex. Rules only apply to other people.
They legitimately believe it should be fine to pay for sex, but should be illegal to be paid for sex.
Most sex workers are women, so it tracks
I wonder how Lindsey feels.
That old post that posited conservatism is "ingroups to protect, outgroups to bind" was really on the mark.
True! Isn't there a famous quote related to that? Trying to recall....
The original is from here: https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288
I think it was just some guy on the Internet, but it's a compelling description.
It makes my head hurt how ridiculous conservatives are and how they spin things. They’re only making their lives harder. Imagine the amount of tax revenue that could be collected from legalizing prostitution.
Let's say it together: they don't actually care about fiscal responsibility.
It's obvious that they don't because they only ever work one variable (spending) of the fucking equation:
spending - income = deficit
Even if you stop all of your spending entirely, you'll remain in debt forever if you never have any income, so it's a losing way to fix the problem, but that won't stop them or their idiot voters from insisting upon it.
Their only consistency is inconsistency.
It's not a homogenous group. You've absolutely got libertarians on one end, wanting to dissolve the state and legalize a market for children as sexual commodities on one end. And then you've got the Holy Rollers on the order end, who think coffee and cigarettes need to be next on the chopping block.
They formed an alliance of convenience to crush the labor movement. But now they are very awkward bedfellows.
Oh yeah, and make it more difficult for those trapped in their situation to get out of it.
Gotta keep women in their place and under control, even if we say it’s the wrong place. It’s all about control and restricting their autonomy.
hey producing more slave class is important to. its not just about the women.
If we are going to make it illegal, we really need to flip the laws and make it illegal to hire one. This would give those in the business a legal way of asking for help.
Not sure what you mean. Soliciting a prostitute is already illegal in most states.
Well in Sweden it's legal to sell but illegal to buy
I see this sentiment a lot from the uneducated crowd, but unfortunately human trafficking seems to increase whenever sex work is legalized so I cannot condone it.
Human trafficking is there, anyway. The victims tend to be afraid, because they're forced to do otherwise illegal things, and therefore don't want to come forward. So what often happens under legalization is that a whole bunch of victims suddenly come out, which is now recorded as an increase in human trafficking.
So you're saying it's okay to torture and rape even more women and children because there were already women and children being raped and tortured anyways? I'm not seeing the logic, mate.
Studies show increases in the country where humans are sourced from, not explainable by "victims suddenly coming out".
No, try to read more carefully.
No, you try to read more carefully.
Royally ratioed.
As if 20 down arrows would change how I feel about human trafficking.
It might have encouraged you to notice that they are saying that the increase you are talking about is likely a statistical anomaly caused by the depressive effect sex work being illegal has on victims coming forward.
Put simply, sex work being illegal is beneficial to human traffickers because it keeps victims from seeking help. If you are a victim of a crime you're more likely to come forward when you are not likely to get charged yourself for the trouble of being trafficked.
I've already explained that the victims coming forward does not account for the increase in human trafficking from countries where they're being sourced from. Plus, it's not just a 5% uptick, in many cases the number is several times or magnitudes higher than before legalization of prostitution.
What is happening is demand is being created far faster than domestic supply.
Seems to be working well in the Netherlands, mate.
Not according to the Netherlands, mate.
https://www.nationaalrapporteur.nl/publicaties/rapporten/2021/01/21/dadermonitor-mensenhandel-2015-2019
According to them, Human Trafficking more than doubled over the observed period. They also saw despite the higher number of victims the number of suspects decreased.
Also a 2022 report in English shows the trend continued strong: https://www.dutchrapporteur.nl/latest/news/2023/10/18/annual-figures-human-trafficking-2022
“Uneducated”I think you need to do some reading, friend. Human trafficking is already a big problem. Legitimizing sex work and regulating it removes t some of the incentives to operate behind the scenes, just like legalizing pot, and frankly you get rid of the whole under-age thing because no government entity is going to allow that.S/he's right.
I wish it were true, but it's really not. Human trafficking increases in both countries that legalize sex work and also countries where the humans are trafficked from. Tons of studies over many decades illustrate the cold hard truth.
Well, damn...you're right. TIL.
https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-prostitution-increase-human-trafficking/
The problem with these case studies are that they are small. If you don't know what's what and your pimp tells you it's illegal and you can't go to the police, you might believe them. If it's widely and commonly known that it's legal and that the police will actually help you, then that will change the results. That and if you throw the weight and resources of, oh let's say, DEA marijuana enforcement against human trafficking, that will also change the results.
Your theory is not supported by data. Massive amounts of data collected over decades.
FFS he is not in trouble for paying for sex. He is in trouble for paying hush money using campaign funds. Good lord, conservatives are so brainwashed
I just had this argument with a friend of mine. It’s even legal to pay someone to sign an NDA. The charges are “Falsifying business records in the first degree.”
It’s not a “hush-money trial” it’s “criminal business fraud.”
Don't forget election interference
That’s a separate trial in Georgia. He also has the classified documents case tried in Florida.
The Stormy Daniels case is also about election interference. He interfered in the election by paying to conceal critical information that may have changed voters’ minds.
Where do you see that in the charges? I read through them all and didn’t see it.
It’s not in the charges, it’s the nature of the case. This isn’t my opinion but that of legal expert from the podcast Legal Scrutiny. And they know their shit.
I could see conviction in this case being used as evidence in the election fraud trial, but he’s not being tried by a federal prosecutor. It’s a criminal trail brought up by the State of NY.
Just like Clinton wasn't in trouble for the blowjob. He was in trouble for lying about it under oath. But everyone who talks about it now says he got impeached for a blowjob.
It's exactly why Republicans cried "purgery trap" when people wanted to have Trump testify as president. They knew what they did during the Clinton investigation and just assume Democrats would somehow "force" Trump to lie about something completely unrelated...
The Clinton investigation was over real estate and somehow made it's way over to blow jobs.
Exactly. He got impeached for lying about questioning unrelated to the investigation on him after the actual subject of the investigation bore no fruit.
I mean, this is right out of the liberal playbook. They've been screaming for 30 years that Clinton was impeached for a blowjob. He wasn't. He was impeached for purjury, trying to cover up the blowjob. Same shit different party.
This, isn’t the onion?
Satire is dead, reality killed it.
Most countries remove their moron politicians. The United States just allows them to remain president until the end of term.
3rd world countries like the US have all sorts of backwards politics.
I had the same reaction last week when a bunch of GOP reps starting speaking in tongues on the floor.
That made my physically ill when I read about it. That's some serious theatrics and/or mental illness.
Ah yes - the party of the Christian church isn’t it? 😂
Nonsense. In Christ's church you don't pay for sex. You just molest an alter boy, as God intended.
Chud Life Baby 😎
Yes, let’s legalize and give protections to all the sex workers.
Chuds: No, not like that!!
Isn't that a crime in the US? Did these people just confess to crimes? But of course they're "conservatives" so it's OK.
Not if you film it.
What an amazing little carveout, and since almost everyone has a phone with a camera...
This was the plot of an episode of Boston Legal. I wouldn't assume it would actually hold up in court. In the story a professor of sex studies had paid a prostitute to answer some interview questions for a study, and he "got carried away". But he was filming it, so they argued that he was actually making a pornographic film, which is protected speech.
IIRC, the person who owns the production company can't be the one getting it on. Even that's probably not enforced much.
Not everywhere. Prostitution is legal in Nevada (just not within the city limits of Vegas).
Not a crime everywhere in the US, cat houses are still around in Nevada. I’m assuming the gentlemen making these statements frequented a couple cities in that state to come to this assumption.
It's actually fully legal in some areas. Vegas comes to mind.
Actually, prostitution is not legal in Clark County (where Las Vegas is). It is legal in the rest of Nevada, though. The sex workers that advertise in Vegas are based just outside of the county lines and travel into the city when called. The cops pretty much just look the other way so it seems legal there.
Just like Jesus from his pedestal... Let whoever amungst us hasn't paid for sex throw the first felony.
Actually Jesus said "Let whoever among us who hasn't falsified business records throw the first felony."
The paying for sex was a mistranslation.
It's an easy mistranslation to make, especially when you had a large group of scholars reading hundreds of accounts of stuff that happened hundreds of years earlier written in several different languages and deciding which stories were "real" and worth putting in one book. Then a thousand years later you had another group of people translating THAT.
I'm surprised there aren't more stories about Jesus falsifying his business records after trying to cover up a sex scandal.
Melania pays and pays and pays...
Like, she is paying some dude on the side and you're implying she does it all the time, or...?
She is married to Donald. Every day of her life, she pays.
I really don't care, do U?
Sex work is work. And if it's work, there are customers.
There's probably a long list of reasons to criticize these Trump supporters, including not understanding what this case in particular is about, but being customers of sex work ain't it.
Demonizing customers of sex work maintains the taboo and hurts the movement to legitimize, legalize, regulate, and provide normal employment benefits to sex work.
Conservatives love to hate on sex workers, particularly when they are migrants or POC or (God help us all) LGBT.
The prevailing view of Republicans in this moment is that Stormy Daniels is trying to extort Trump for more money and using the NY Southern District as leverage.
Far from demonizing customers, this view holds the client up as a victim and the sex worker as some kind of intrusive parasite who has failed to know her place.
Totally agree with you. But this:
Is because their golden god can do no wrong. That every law he broke was somehow not his fault, and clearly the fault of the accuser or corrupt prosecutors. They will shift the focus away from an argument they can't win, campaign funds being used for non-campaign purposes, to anything they can get the base whipped up about.
But my complaint isn't even about that. My problem is that this article demonizes these Trump supporters for one wrong reason. That characterizing customers of sex work as weirdos for admitting it, regardless of their presidential candidate of choice, hurts the effort to legitimize sex work. There's a lot of fish in the barrel of criticism for this group, no need for the author and OP to support a conservative anti-sex work narrative at the same time.
I think its a more broad understanding of sex workers as disposable playthings.
There's a general generic insult in modern media that boils down to "you're fat and ugly and nobody wants to fuck you". And the anti-Trumpers latch on to people visiting sex workers as an opportunity to hurl out this age-old insult. If this was an article about a movie star or popular musician admitting to patroning sex workers, I doubt the criticisms would match.
If conservatives really don't like sex work because it is exploitative, they should want capitalism eradicated. It kinda shows the real reason they actually don't like sex work.
Conservatives don't like sex work because it ruins the "wife will submit to her husband" power dynamic around sex they were taught is the norm.
Sex work being illegal, and as a result inherently ripe for exploitation, is the feature not a bug to conservatives.
yeah. I'm not opposed to giving them the wall, but I'm a little opposed to slut shaming them.
Wait! Is prostitution legal in the US?
Only in Nevada, in the form of brothels. And they only operate in a handful of counties.
🙋♂️
I've only been paid for sex, never paid for it myself.
I'm not so sure that the author wasn't taken in by a Yes Men style prank. Because honestly, that sounds like satire and the satire wasn't coming from the author of the article.
Reality has become indistinguishable from satire.
I agree, but I think there are hints here and there.
For example-
Thailand isn't really famous for it's ciswomen prostitutes...
Uhh, what? Yes it is.
If you say so...
https://www.vice.com/en/article/bj9p9w/a-behind-the-scenes-look-at-thailands-ladyboy-sex-industry
That doesn’t refute my point. Thailand has ladyboys, sure, but there are easily 10x the number of female sex workers. It’s one of the most well known cis sex tourism destinations.
I think you're confused. I'm not talking about the reality, I'm talking about why I think this is a hint that it's satire.
But they're saying why it shouldn't be taken as satire, because in reality that is a place you go to for ciswomen too.
I've rotted my brain enough in the past trying to figure out what Trump reality is by watching Fox news that I can't be bothered to rot it anymore, but I'd bet that fox or Newsmax is twisting this as "Trump unfairly being brought to court for paying for sex" which is why these jokers are out there arguing that "we all do it." Kind of like the "locker room talk" from his first election that supposedly all guys do... :/
That isn't what they are famous for.
They're famous for that too.
That statement alone tells you all you need to know about his people
I read this in Jordan Kleppers voice. Man, you can't make this shit up, it just writes itself lmao
They're mad that they had to pay for sex because they expect to get their wee-wees wet for free.
The fact that the article leads with “SKETCH” makes me think it’s satire.
TIL “sketch” has an additional meaning in UK English.
Thanks!
Is Skit the North American equivalent?
Skit and sketch can be used interchangeably in reference to a short performance, usually comedic, but they do not have any particular connection to current events other than current events are often good material for parody.
We do not use either word in the context of satirical writing.
Me, I haven't.
To be fair, even if you're not going for a prostitute, men are still paying for sex in the end.
Buying dinner, gifts, paying for events, etc. All of that is what makes men more attractive in the eyes of females.
South Park did a good episode on it.
Edit: Seems like a lot of people have a problem with hard truths here, and that's understandable.
But really, no need for the personal insults.
To be more fair, it's irrelevant to the case that he paid for sex.
Not irrelevant, but it's not the illegal thing he's on trial for.
This is such an unhealthy take.
Sorry, man
It's just reality.
Yeah, sorry to hear that for you
It's reality for all of us.
People here like to ignore hard truths, though.
It's really not.
I mean, it's two things, really. I'm sorry to hear that "females" in your life are all that shallow. I mean, not going to say that many people don't like being treated or etc, but I never really dated women who cared about that stuff much, personally. But second, treating dating so transactionally is, well, a shame.
We're just going to have to disagree on this.
Probably we just have had different experiences.
Which is why I was saying sorry
"Never take relationship advice from someone who refers to women as feeeeeemales" is like the internet equivalent of "never trust a person with shiny gear"
Can you point out what I said that wasn’t true?
If you think that sex even requires buying gifts, or that buying gifts makes men more "attractive", you're delusional.
To be fair, if you have an extremely toxic personality that no woman seeking a desirable partner would tolerate, it's probably easier to court less serious women with gifts in a bid for transactional sex.
As for the "females" bit, sure, women are females, but so is my dog, and she's literally a removed (lol at my instance censoring me for saying this).
So if you can't muster humanizing language like "woman", and instead cling to sterile and human-nonspecific language like "females", you aren't wrong, you're just an asshole.
But yes, this guy absolutely is delusional if he thinks this is the way of the world.
It doesn't "require" it.
Brush up on your reading comprehension.
Your point would've been better recepted if you wouldn't have said females.
Nah, it was sexist already without the dehumanizing language.
Nothing that I said was sexist.
Can you point out what I said that wasn't true?
Buddy, you call women "females". That alone is a gigantic red flag that you don't respect women. Nobody that respects women talks like that. Women certainly notice shit like that when they're considering whether or not a man is worth their time and energy.
As for your insistence that I prove you wrong, let's just say that I have no doubt that you're telling the truth when you say that women won't sleep with you organically. Everything else is just an extremely toxic expression of opinion that doesn't deserve to be taken seriously by anyone who knows better.
You might want to self-reflect on the way you feel about women and consider why so many people here aren't seeing things the way you do. Nothing about what you said rings true to me, because I've always treated women like they are human beings who exist for reasons other than fulfilling my sexual desires. That mentality has gotten me a lot farther than your attitude seems to have gotten you.
Wrong, but ok.
I never said that. You must not be able to comprehend English like the other guy who claimed I said it was "required."
I specifically said: "Buying dinner, gifts, paying for events, etc. All of that is what makes men more attractive in the eyes of females" which is true.
You're arguing against what I'm not saying and getting mad at me for it, lol.
Well: you and the other guy are showing me you can't read well, the snowball effect is very prevalent on these forums, and many of you people just ignore facts you don't like or pretend they don't make sense.
Are you familiar with argumentum ad populum? You should come across it when you go to college.
That might true for you if "Buying dinner, gifts, paying for events, etc." is the bulk of what you can offer a woman you are interested in. The fact that you use derogatory language to make this point leads credibility to that theory in relation to you.
Good lord, just shut up. Your entire point here is just an anecdotal fallacy in that you think your personal experiences with women constitute a universal truth about women. What I'm telling you isn't that my point of view is right because people agree with me - I'm telling you that if you smell shit everywhere you go, to check your shoes.
Thanks for proving my point.
Medium "articles" are just blogs, by the way.
Or maybe grow up and see things for what they really are. Money runs the world, sweetie.
You're just trying to attack me personally because I'm saying things you do not like. It's better to be ignorant than to accept hard truths, in your mind.
I hope you can find yourself a healthy relationship one of these days pal.