Hey, you! Yes, you, in the polo shirt and khakis. Looking for a woman who looks just like your daughter? Having trouble finding a life partner who shares your belief that aggressive groping is just an alpha male’s way of saying “hello” and that the safety of your AR-15 is more important than the safety of your children? Well, put down the Gab account (please, for the love of God, get off of Gab), grab your tiki torch and MAGA hat, and get ready to Make America Date Again! Wait… what’s that?
Yes, there’s a new dating site catering specifically to Trump supporters, and they weren’t even clever enough to come up with the tagline “Make America Date Again.” The site is called Trump.Dating, and declares in its opening statement, “We believe that by matching patriotic and political viewpoints as a base foundation of the relationship, it will allow one to focus on what really matters”—like, say, complaining to the manager that there’s nowhere for you to sit when when you inevitably go on a date to Papa John’s.
The site explicitly excludes LGBTQ people—when signing up, it asks if you are a “straight woman” or a “straight man”—and although Trump.dating demurs from openly engaging in white supremacist rhetoric in its promotional copy, the all-white stock photo models, references to being on the “same team,” and splitting of hairs between “Scandinavian/Mediterranean/Eastern European/Western European” under the “ethnicity” part of the “about me” section make the implication clear enough. Once logged in as a “straight woman,” you will meet such eligible bachelors as GodEmperor2020, who believes Trump is a god as well as an emperor, Hot4Ivanka, who is hot for Ivanka, and a gentleman from Louisiana who just wants to “grab you by the heart.” (Really.)
But after browsing profiles on the site for a while, amid all the “alt-right” dog whistles and anti-feminist sentiment, it becomes clear that some of these guys are genuinely lonely souls, amateur songwriters looking for their muses and big teddy bears just looking to cuddle. But in online dating, as in elections, it’s hard not to wonder if these men (and women) are just suckers being taken for a ride. The number of obvious catfishing accounts, both on the male and female side of the site, is significant—although more prevalent among women, as a search of female profiles with a second, “straight man” burner account reveals. (Users listed as female can’t look at women’s accounts, because that’s unnatural.) Then again, what else would you expect from a demographic so easily swayed by Russian propaganda on Twitter?
So, in the interest of reaching across the aisle, if any actual Trump.dating users are reading this: This link takes you to to something called Google Reverse Image Search. If you’re chatting with someone on Trump.dating and they keep bringing the conversation back around from how come there isn’t a men’s history month to asking you for your credit card number, upload their profile photo and click “show matches.” If that’s not enough to convince you that ‘bots are actively attempting to undermine the American way of life, then nothing will.