On Wednesday morning #WaterSportsGate was top trend on Twitter as the world collectively lost it’s sh*t over unverified allegations against Donald Trump.
Broken by CNN and published in full by BuzzFeed News, the story claims memos, compiled in part by a former British spy, detail compromising personal and financial information about the President-Elect allegedly held by Russia.
The memos discuss videos covertly recorded in a Moscow hotel room in 2013, the juiciest part which spawned the above hashtag being this:
So incensed was Trump that he went FULL CAPS LOCK on Twitter.
Inevitably and hilariously, #WaterSportsGate was born and top of the pile was one Frankie Boyle.
The FBI is reported to be investigating the accuracy of the 35-page compilation of memos, which cited ‘Source D’ as saying Trump’s conduct included hiring prostitutes “to perform a ‘golden showers” (urination) show in front of him.’
It cited ‘Source D’ as saying Trump’s conduct included hiring prostitutes ‘to perform a ‘golden showers’ (urination) show in front of him.’ It says the hotel was known to be under the control of Russia’s FSB, with hidden cameras and microphones.
A two-page synopsis was presented to both Trump and Barack Obama by senior intelligence officials in order to show such information was already circulating in media and intelligence communities.
The claims have been reported before, and haven’t been independently verified.
The Kremlin has denied they are true.
But that didn’t stop the rest of Twitter getting involved anyway.
Alec Baldwin and the Saturday Night Live team will be... well...
Trump is due to give his first press conference in months later today.
The allegations have been circulating in intelligence and media circles for a number of months and also allege there was an exchange of information between Trump’s team and intermediaries for the Russian government.
As CNN acknowledges, those same claims were first reported before the election. Now CNN is reporting that FBI Director James Comey, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan and Adm. Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, have presented information summarising the claims to Obama and Trump. That shows that the intelligence community takes the allegations seriously enough to investigate them, summarise them, and brief the president and his successor on them.
But there’s still no compelling public evidence that the claims are true. We haven’t seen how much of this information the intelligence community thought was worth mentioning or was able to find some verification for in the two-page document they presented to Obama and Trump.