That’s a completely different situation. Assuming that such a tape exists, the issue isn’t that Trump has sexual kinks. The issue is that the President is subject to blackmail from a foreign power.

If such a tape existed for anyone else and was in the hands of a foreign government, that person would not be able to get the lowest level of security clearance in the US because the opportunity for blackmail places them at great risk.

In an ideal world Americans would be more like the French and not care about people’s personal consensual sex lives at all, in which case the tape would lose all its blackmailing power, but since the American public does care, the possibility of blackmail is real.

Interestingly, the "pee tape" as described doesn't really even depict the typical self humiliation-oriented urination kink. The allegation is that Trump hired five prostitutes to pee on a bed, not one that he was in or using but one that Obama had used years earlier.

It's unclear to me whether that even counts as a kink: if it's true, I'm not sure Trump was getting a sexual thrill out of it. My guess is that it's more of an unchecked mental illness, with Trump as Captain Ahab chasing after his great white whale.

Surely they must replace the mattress between presidencies, right?

None of the people I'm talking about misunderstand what the real point is. What they took issue with was the snickering about the content of the video and the fact that someone's sexual fetishes would be used as blackmail in the first place. Everyone understands the gravity of the President being blackmailed.

Well that's better- it at least shows the problem isn't misunderstanding the significance so much as it's letting a peripheral issue occupy attention at the expense of the more important issue.

But that's a problem because it's exactly this kind of conversational shift that makes derailment a good tactic for mitigating the impact of political scandals.

The Pee Tape is an issue because the Racist President had prostitutes pee on a bed that the Black President slept on. That is what the issue is with the Pee Tape. It is not about kink or anything else, just a racist doing racist stuff.

I think it's less about race and more about embarrassment. He seems to have deep-seated psychological issues that are being triggered by having been mocked at the correspondent's dinner. I'm not sure how he felt about Obama before, but he has become obsessed with fighting back and undoing everything Obama did just on principle -- regardless of whether he otherwise likes or agrees with the policy.

Wasn't the bed-peeing incident completely made up? Some guy was paid to create a Russian dossier which was later discredited.

No. The dossier has neither been discredited nor substantiated. It was Republican opposition research (I don't think we know what candidate or group funded it) and then was later picked up by someone connected to Hillary Clinton after the Republican primary was over.

AFAIK, there's no more or less reason to believe it now than there was when it first came out.

The "pee tape" has been widely discredited. I'm not pro trump but using the word "racist" three times in two sentences and offering fake news as proof does not help your point, in fact it makes you look silly.

I'll break the news to you, the current President is a racist. He is not just a little casual racist, he is pretty damn racist. Let's not tap dance around the issue anymore and let's just call him what he is.

He is also dumb, but that has nothing to do with being a racist or our discussion.

I was thinking as much of his multiple divorces, affairs, and crude statements on record.

The pee tape is an issue if it could be used for blackmail.