There's a lot going on, as Rachel Maddow says at the top of her show every night.

Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel after Trump fired FBI directer James Comey and now Comey's new book is out and Trump isn't going to speak to Mueller because the FBI raided his lawyer's office and by not speaking to Mueller POTUS may have sped up the release of a report from Mueller but to prevent that from happening Trump might fire Mueller, Rosenstein, Sessions, and the all janitors at the FBI and Trump is signaling that he's going to pardon everyone who has lied to the FBI or obstructed justice and the Trumped up Republican National Committee launched a smear campaign against James Comey and Sean Hannity at Fox News accused Mueller of heading up a "deep state" crime family intent on taking down Trump and a few minutes ago Trump called Comey an "untruthful slime ball" on Twitter... and this is what democracy looks like, at least in the United States, at least right now, at least as long as we're a democracy.

There's a lot going on, as Rachel might say will definitely open her show by saying tonight, but I'm going to focus on the overlap between the Mueller probe, Comey's new book, and my specific area of expertise: kinky motherfuckers.

So is POTUS into piss?

dailynewscover.jpg
“I honestly never thought this words would come out of my mouth, but I don't know whether the current president of the United States was with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow in 2013," Comey told George Stephanopoulos in an interview on ABC.

The President told James Comey in a private meeting that it couldn't have happened: He would never be in the same room with pissing Russian prostitutes because he's a germaphobe. (Non-pissing Russian prostitutes, on the other hand...) From the Washington Post''s writeup of the most salacious details in Comey's "very persuasive" new book:

Comey writes that Trump asked him to have the FBI investigate the allegations to prove they were not true, and offered varying explanations to convince him why. “I’m a germaphobe,” Trump told him in a follow-up call on Jan. 11, 2017, according to Comey’s account. “There’s no way I would let people pee on each other around me. No way.” Later, the president asked what could be done to “lift the cloud” because it was so painful for first lady Melania Trump...

A week after the Trump Tower meeting, on Jan. 11, Comey writes that Trump called him and said he was concerned about the dossier being made public and was fixated on the prostitutes allegation. The president-elect argued that it could not be true because he had not stayed overnight in Moscow but had only used the hotel room to change his clothes. And after Trump explained that he would never allow people to urinate near him, Comey recalls laughing. “I decided not to tell him that the activity alleged did not seem to require either an overnight stay or even being in proximity to the participants,” Comey writes. “In fact, though I didn’t know for sure, I imagined the presidential suite of the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow was large enough for a germaphobe to be at a safe distance from the activity.”

Trump may or may not have been in close proximity. But an appeal to germaphobia does not get one off the urophilia hook—quite the opposite, in fact. A germaphobe is somewhat likelier to be into filthy, gross, or germy things than a non-germaphobe.

People's kinks involve eroticized transgressions against not just societal norms and standards, but against the self—eroticized violations of our self-image, self-perception, and self-projection. Think of strong, feminist women who take no crap out of the bedroom but inside the bedroom want to have their hair pulled, their asses slapped, and to be called sluts; think of all those out-and-proud gay men who speak up whenever anyone says anything even remotely homophobic but who love being called "faggot" when they're getting fucked; think of all those powerful and wealthy straight white men who patronize professional dominants because nothing gets them off like crawling, begging, and giving up their power.

Of course not every germophobe is into piss and/or other forms of wet and/or messy play—just as not every feminist woman wants to be have her hair pulled and her ass slapped and not every out-and-proud gay man gets off on being called a faggot when there's a dick in his ass and not every wealthy and powerful straight white man gets off on being made to crawl and beg by a crop-wielding, strap-on-wearing dominatrix. But enough in each category does for all three to qualify as clichés; we can't speak with certainty about their statistical significance because there aren't a lot of grants out there for researchers who study kinks. But the anecdotal evidence is overwhelming.

So an assertion of germophobia/feminism/pride/power isn't by itself proof that someone isn't turned on by piss, ravishment, homophobic dirty talk, or submission, respectively. If anything, it increases the odds for the opposite being the case.

And a person who is ashamed of their kinks and is in a panic to cover them up is highly likely to point to the very thing that makes their kink so arousing in the first place. Instead of, "That's not something that turns me on so it's not something I would do," they say, "I couldn't be into that because I'm a germaphobe/feminist/proud gay man/powerful dude." The kinkster subconsciously longs to be exposed—another violation—because deep down we long to be known, to be seen for who and what we really are. But only a few of us are lucky enough to have a special prosecutor to make it happen.

So, yeah, the pee tape is real. Trump keeps telling us so himself.

And finally...


That Trump can't attack Comey without accusing him of being a proven leaker who took leaks to the media and continues to leak leaks all over the place is pretty revealing all by itself.

* Runner up headline: "The President of the United States Doth Protest Too Much, Peethinks."