GQ magazine asked Donald Trump Jr., the son of the leader of the free world, if he has ever wanted to have sex with his mother, according to emails obtained by Breitbart News.
The reporter writing the GQ story, Julia Ioffe, was fired a little over a year ago from Politico for making similarly prurient accusations against the first family, suggesting that President Trump was having sex with his daughter Ivanka Trump. After being fired from Politico, Ioffe joined The Atlantic‘s staff and she also writes for other publications–including this piece for GQ magazine.
The wild story begins a couple weeks ago, when GQ researcher Andrew Fedorov—on behalf of Ioffe, for a story published this Thursday—emailed a series of fact-checking questions to the Trump Organization’s official press request email address. The email, obtained by Breitbart News, included questions about the president’s son’s well-known love for fishing and angling, as well as various other basic, non-controversial questions.
But then came this bombshell: “Was there ever a time when Donald Trump Jr. felt any oedipal impulses?”
“Oedipal impulses,” or an Oedipus Complex, is a reference to the mythical Greek tale of Oedipus of Thebes.
The story of Oedipus Rex, by ancient Greek playwright Sophocles, essentially goes as such: Oedipus is told as a young boy by an oracle that he is destined to kill his father and marry his mother. He flees his home in Corinth to avoid fulfilling the prophecy and comes to Thebes, where he marries the queen and becomes king. A plague besets the city, and Oedipus sets out to find an oracle with an answer on how to stop it—and the oracle tells him to find the murderer of the previous king before Oedipus, Laius. Oedipus investigates, and discovers that his parents in Corinth were not really his true birth parents, and later finds out that Laius was his father—and that he had killed Laius in a remote mountain not realizing he was King Laius. Oedipus, having married his mother the queen Jocasta, had ironically fulfilled the prophecy he was determined to avoid fulfilling.
That story later became the basis for the Freudian psychological theory an “Oedipus Complex” where a man—or a woman—wants to have sex with their parent of the opposite sex and views their parent of the same sex as a rival.
“The positive libidinal feelings of a child toward the parent of the opposite sex and hostile or jealous feelings toward the parent of the same sex that in Freudian psychoanalytic theory may be a source of adult personality disorder when unresolved,” Merriam-Webster defines Oedipus Complex as meaning.
No one from GQ has even attempted to justify the distasteful insinuation with a reporting angle relevant to the public interest. No mention or suggestion of this line of questioning made it into the published version of Ioffe’s story. Ioffe herself has not commented on this publicly, but a GQ spokesperson did reply to a request for comment several hours after publication of this story. The GQ spokesperson confirmed that the magazine is standing by Ioffe and blamed the fact checker–not Ioffe–for the mistake. The GQ spokesperson apologized and said it fit into the realm of “stupid questions.”
“Sometimes, in the research process, fact checkers can be too blunt and insensitive or, in this case, ask stupid questions,” a GQ spokesperson told Breitbart News. “We apologize for that, and want to be clear those questions did not come from our reporter and are not reflected in her story, which we thoroughly stand by.”
Trump, Jr., and those close to him are understandably upset.
“We are disappointed by the astonishingly inappropriate questions posed to Don, Jr., for this piece,” Andy Surabian, a former Trump campaign and White House official who now represents the president’s son, told Breitbart News. “We’re hopeful that in the future GQ will have the common decency to refrain from asking people about bizarre and disgusting conspiracy theories that have no basis in reality.”
Sean Spicer, former White House press secretary, was equally upset. “This continuing line of questions is both disgusting and reprehensible,” Spicer told Breitbart News.
Dr. Sebastian Gorka, former White House aide and editor at Breitbart News, condemned the magazine’s fixation on salacious insults as “demented.”
“GQ used to be a mildly entertaining read about where to buy your next pair of brogues, or which style of aviators is cool this year,” Gorka said. “Now it just reads like a glossier and just as demented version of Mother Jones.
“The editors and the author owe Don Jr. and the entire Trump family an immediate apology for their despicable screed. Asking the son of the President of the United States about having an ‘Oedipus complex’ isn’t journalism, it’s the act of a political sociopath.
“GQ has succeeded in lowering their reputation to the point at which The National Enquirer is more reputable than they are. By succumbing to Hilary’s logic of seeing those they do not agree with as Deplorable, they have reinforced for most Americans just why Donald Trump became President.”
Reporter Ioffe was fired from Politico in late 2016 for doing almost exactly the same thing with a different member of the president’s family, his daughter Ivanka.
Here’s an excerpt from a report in The Daily Caller in December 2016 laying out what Ioffe did to get fired:
Julia Ioffe, a former contributing writer for Politico Magazine who will be joining The Atlantic as a reporter in January, suggested Wednesday on Twitter that President-elect Donald Trump is having sex with his daughter Ivanka.
Politico told The Daily Caller that the tweet accelerated the timeline of her departure, and that Ioffe is no longer with the publication, effective “immediately.”
“This tweet is completely unacceptable and is an obvious violation of POLITICO standards,” a Politico source told TheDC. “Julia Ioffe is no longer with the publication.”
Ioffe tweeted out a link of a news report saying Ivanka will be using office space in the White House typically reserved for the first lady and commented, “Either Trump is fucking his daughter or he’s shirking nepotism laws. Which is worse?”
Nearly two years later, Ioffe’s apparent interest in the Trump family’s sex lives has not waned at all.
Trump, Jr.’s mother is Ivana Trump, President Trump’s first wife. He and his brother Eric currently run the Trump Organization while their father is serving as president and their sister Ivanka serves in the White House.
That obscene question from GQ asking whether Donald Trump, Jr., had “oedipal impulses” was not the only odd question in this email that the magazine sent to the Trump Organization.
Other weird personal questions include:
Has Donald Trump Jr. consumed alcohol in 2018?
Did Donald Trump Jr. have a choice whether to participate in his father’s Presidential campaign or not?
Was he as aggrieved by the death of his father’s father, as by the death of his mother’s father?
In addition, GQ magazine’s list of questions includes one that is potentially a security risk: “What floor is his office on at Trump Tower?” Given that Trump, Jr., is the son of the president of the United States, he is under the protection of the U.S. Secret Service. Revealing precise locations of such people could be a security risk, sources familiar with the matter told Breitbart News.
“Unfortunately, this is the type of morally bankrupt treatment that the Trump family has to deal with on a daily basis from the fake news media,” Citizens United president Dave Bossie, Trump’s 2016 general election deputy campaign manager, told Breitbart News. “Would GQ have ever asked the children of Barack Obama or Bill and Hillary Clinton the same type of fact-free and repugnant questions that they apparently felt comfortable asking Don, Jr.?”
A source close to Donald Trump, Jr., added that this kind of disgusting activity by the media has become commonplace. “This is but one example of the kind of hate and vitriol that Don and his family are subjected to behind the scenes every day,” the source close to the president’s son said. “When Don and the president are critical of the press, it’s well-deserved.”
A source close to the first family unloaded on Ioffe in particular, saying her disgusting actions hurt the field of actual journalism. “When you look up fake news in the dictionary, you should see a picture of Julia Ioffe,” the source close to the Trump family told Breitbart News. “Her and her team’s demented line of questioning to Don Jr. was classless, morally reprehensible, and does a disservice to real journalists everywhere.”
Another Donald Trump, Jr., ally said that Ioffe would have been fired if she worked at a conservative media outlet but is likely to skate off scot-free because she works for a leftist magazine. “If a conservative journalist did this they’d be fired and run out of town, but Trump-haters in the media reward this behavior with high-fives,” the ally said. “It’s disgusting.”
This piece has been updated to include a comment from a GQ spokesperson, provided to Breitbart News hours after publication.
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