Would you look for your perfect match on trump.dating?

Website screenshot.

Website screenshot.

Published Mar 4, 2018

Share

Washington - Trump.dating is an odd site, and not just because it featured a convicted sex offender's smiling face on its homepage. More on that shortly.

It's strange in nearly every way a dating site could be strange. Its all-caps slogan - "MAKE DATING GREAT AGAIN! FIND YOUR PRO-TRUMP MATCH TODAY" - may actually be the least weird thing about it.

There apparently are no pro-Trump gay people

The common denominator among the site's users is supposed to be that they, unlike most opinion poll respondents, support President Donald Trump. But try to register and the first thing you're asked is whether you're a "Straight Man" or "Straight Woman." Gay people (let alone bisexual, transgender or queer) simply don't exist in the menus.

Okay, let's talk about the child sex conviction

Trump.dating's poster photo showed an authentic pro-Trump couple from North Carolina: Jodi Riddleberger in a pink MAGA hat, and her husband, Barrett - whom the News & Observer subsequently reported has a 1995 conviction for "indecent liberties with a child."

Barrett Riddleberger didn't respond to requests for comment, but his conviction was common knowledge in Guilford County, North Carolina, where he and his wife are active in local Republican politics.

He was accused of videotaping himself having sex with a 15-year-old when he was 25, according to the Greensboro News & Record.

Who's behind the site, anyway?

Trump.dating's spokesperson, as mentioned above, gave his name as Sean McGrossler. The site's founder and owner, as declared in its Feb. 5 launch announcement on the Daily Caller, is Sean McGrossier, with an i, though it is sometimes spelled as McGrossler in the same advertisement.

McGrossler (the site's spokesman) did not immediately respond to questions from The Washington Post about whether he is also McGrossier/McGrossler (the site's owner), and, if so, which spelling of his name is correct.

For some reason, Sean McGrossler's byline on the Daily Caller is tagged as "ariddleberger" - the last name of the former model convicted of a sex crime, whom Sean McGrossier (the spokesman - and possibly also the owner) said no longer represented Trump.dating.

The people on it

We just wrote 700 words about the curiosities of Trump.dating without discussing the actual dating experience, which is frankly a little weird too.

Like, what are we to make of kyschyanne, a 21-year-old user from Garland, Texas, who's bio line is "white power?"

To be fair, the site's user base may be distorted by all the attention it's received as a result of Riddleberger's criminal history. The Washington Post, among others, had to make a fake user profile to find kyschyanne. Who's to say kyschyanne isn't fake, too? Or hailxxxy - "I love trump with a dying passion."

The Washington Post

Related Topics: