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Donald Trump has been mocked by comedian Seth Meyers for recently bringing up allegations that the former president had "four hookers" perform a "golden shower" in a Moscow hotel room, as alleged in the 2016 Steele dossier.
This was compiled by Christopher Steele, formerly head of the Russia desk at Britain's MI6 intelligence service, in 2016 on behalf of a firm working for the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
The dossier contained a number of unverified allegations, including claims the Russian state held compromising material on Trump as a result of his activities at a Moscow hotel, which one source said took place in 2013. Trump has consistently denied the allegation. In October, he launched a lawsuit in London against Steele's company, saying that it had caused him "personal and reputational damage and distress."
Published in full by Buzzfeed just days after Trump's inauguration as president in January 2017, the dossier said that Russia had "kompromat," or compromising material, on Trump as a result of his "personal obsessions and sexual perversions." Newsweek has contacted representatives of Trump via email on Friday for comment.
Specifically, it cited a source who said that Trump had hired the presidential suite of the Carlton Hotel, formerly the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, in Moscow, where he knew Barack and Michelle Obama had previously stayed, before "defiling the bed where they had slept by employing a number of prostitutes to perform a 'golden shower' (urination) show in front of him."
Years after the allegation made headlines, Trump directly addressed it at a rally of his supporters in Fort Dodge, Iowa, on November 18. There, he told the crowd that his wife, Melania, didn't believe the claim for one key reason.
"'He was with four hookers,'" Trump told the crowd in an apparent repeat of the allegations—although that number did not appear in the dossier. "You think that was good to go up and tell my wife, 'It's not true, darling, I love you very much—it's not true!'
"Actually, that one she didn't believe," Trump added, "because she said, 'He's a germophobe. He's not into that, you know. He's not into golden showers, as they say they called them. He's not. I don't like that idea.' No, I thought that would be a big problem, I was going to have a rough night, but that one she was very good on."
In a Thanksgiving-night special of his late-night talk show on Thursday, Meyers mocked Trump for bringing up the claims so many years after the fact.
"Dude, not even Democrats think about the pee tape anymore!" Meyers quipped on Late Night With Seth Meyers. "When you come out six years later and deny a story everybody forgot about, I have to think maybe it's true. If someone came up to you at your 20th high school reunion and said, 'By the way, I'm not the one who put the sardines in your locker,' then you just solved that case."
"My favorite part is when he said Melania didn't believe that one, like there are plenty of other stories," added Meyers, who said he "never believed the golden-showers story, either."
Impersonating Trump, Meyers said: "She didn't believe the golden-showers story, but when the news broke that I asked a porn star to spank me with a Forbes magazine while we watch Shark Week, she said, 'That sounds like my Donald.'"
Stormy Daniels—the former porn star who alleged that she had an affair with Trump back in 2006, one year after he married Melania—previously said that he once asked her to spank him with a copy of Forbes magazine.
The Republican politician has been accused of arranging for his former attorney Michael Cohen to give Daniels $130,000 as a hush money during his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump has repeatedly denied all of the allegations, including Daniels' claim that they'd had an affair.
Following his election in November 2016, Trump, who is the 2024 Republican presidential nomination frontrunner, faced repeated accusations that his campaign was either linked to or compromised by the Russian state.
The 2019 Mueller report, produced by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, said Moscow had interfered in the 2016 election "in sweeping and systematic fashion." However, it "did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government" in these efforts.
In 2022, a lawsuit filed by Trump in Florida against Steele, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and 25 other people alleging that they conspired to undermine his 2016 campaign by spreading false information about his ties to Russia was thrown out by a federal judge.
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About the writer
Ryan Smith is a Newsweek Senior Pop Culture and Entertainment Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on ... Read more