The 2015 movie Megyn Gets Trumped opens with Donald Trump and Megyn Kelly arguing in the middle of a tacky conference room. She calls him "disgusting;" he tells her to "talk to the hand." Trump grumbles that all the women in his life want him to be "political correct." But he's The Donald, and he can say whatever he wants. Kelly watches him, hands on her hips, never wavering.
Ten minutes later, Kelly is naked on a leather couch, getting penetrated by two men. The guys are Trump's "specialty meat"—his gift to Kelly, who, he said, needs some blood "coming in" instead of "coming out." Trump watches from behind a conference room window as Kelly, played by porn star Cherie Deville, orgasms.
The low-budget parody film is Dogfart Productions' reimagining of the infamous feud between the journalist and the POTUS, culminating in an interracial cuckold fantasy meant to mock Trump's arrogance. It was also one of the first in what is now a long list of Trump-themed porn parodies. Hustler has The Donald, starring veteran Evan Stone. Brazzers has a four-part series, ZZ Erection 2016. PornHub and virtual reality porn studio BaDoinkVR have The Donald Trump Sex Tape: A XXX Parody—the most popular political parody of last year. And before the site went down last month, adults-only political satire site The Pornington Post had several videos, also starring Stone, for free.
Every president in modern history has been subject to the parody porn treatment. Porn performers have portrayed former Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, as well as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But statistics released by porn sites show that Trump generates far more interest than any of his predecessors. He's more divisive, more easily spoofed, more extreme in every way. "Trump is a parody of himself," said Hustler founder Larry Flynt. "People are fascinated by his craziness."
Now, studio executives across the country are working to define what political porn looks like in the age of Trump—and how their most absurd videos might serve as a vehicle of political dissent.
With the exception of Who's Nailin' Paylin?, Hustler's wildly popular 2008 spoof of former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, political satire is hardly a hot market in porn, even within the parody subgenre. Obama's law professor persona and scandal-free time in office made for a shallow pool of parody material. Free porn sites do have a handful of videos, including Barack Obama's Big Stimulus Package and Does Palin Have Jungle Love for Obama?, but they're low-budget titles that are short on plot, and none received any real mainstream attention when they came out.
Trump, meanwhile, was a natural character for pornographers long before he was elected, thanks in large part to his role on Celebrity Apprentice. In 2010, Hustler released This Ain't Celebrity Apprentice XXX, starring Kyle Stone in the title role. The year before, Stone starred in Red Light District's Celebrity Apprentass.
Now that he's a politician too, Trump is getting the Who's Nailin Paylin? treatment, in terms of both production value and media attention. Unlike other recent presidents, Trump has "crossover potential," said Mike Stabile, communications director for the Free Speech Coalition, the adult entertainment industry's trade association. "Trump is a bit of a cipher, a bit of a trickster figure. Trump porn appeals both to liberal Democrats who may find it funny and to conservative viewers who may identify with it. He is a unique figure in many ways."
And according to data obtained by Esquire, he's already bringing in big audiences for porn studios. The Donald Trump Sex Tape: A XXX Parody has been viewed over a million times since its release, said Xavi Clos, head of product for VR porn studio BaDoink. The video is the second-most-watched political parody ever on porn aggregate site GameLink, just behind Hustler sequel Hollywood's Nailin' Paylin. Hustler's The Donald followed close behind. Brazzers' ZZ Erection 2016 has also performed well; according to Brazzers' spokesman Matt Stevens, ZZ Erection has received 650,000 total views to date.
"There certainly has been a spike on political parody movies, and this is above average for parody movies," said GameLink marketing director Jeff Dillon. "Hopefully it will keep climbing with Trump in the news 24/7."
Meanwhile, PornHub reported a 648 percent uptick in searches including the word "trump" during the Republican National Convention last July. Trump-related searches rose by 184 percent on streaming and social media site xHamster over those four days, and now total well over 1 million since then, a spokesperson for the site told Esquire.
"There are numbers out there. There's an audience out there," said James Bartholet, who plays the president in Megyn Gets Trumped. "There are people who want to see a person in a position of power get lampooned."
Of course, how those viewership numbers translate to dollar signs is hard to guess. Studios are notoriously tight-lipped about financials, and porn consumers know plenty of ways to get videos for free. Millions of people are watching Trump parody porn, but that doesn't mean they're paying for it. And many adult video sites, including GameLink, have pay-per-minute plans instead of selling individual videos. Buy 200 minutes for £15, and you can watch all 25 minutes of BaDoinkVR's Trump parody and still have plenty of time for the 160 minutes of The Art of Anal Sex Vol. 2. Although viewings of political parodies on GameLink spiked by 500 percent in the last quarter, there's no good way to measure a corresponding increase in revenue, Dillon said.
When asked how much BaDoinkVR earned from The Donald Trump Sex Tape, likely the most popular erotic Trump parody, Clos responded that the studio saw a "significant increase in new subscriptions" since the release of the film—they nearly doubled in the first month—suggesting a "correlation between sales and Trump." "So safe to safe to say it has been huuuge," he told Esquire via email.
But Trump also represents a new threat to the adult film industry. The same man who's talked explicitly about sex and bragged about sexual assault has pledged to make federal obscenity prosecutions a "top priority" of his administration. Some members of his transition team, including former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese and Family Research Council fellow Ken Blackwell, have been vocal in their disdain for pornography.
Some producers see a Trump presidency as an opportunity to use porn as a form of protest, Stabile said. "We're going to use the medium that we have to comment on what's going on politically," he said. "It's not just entertainment for us. We feel very strongly about our right to free speech and our right to sexual speech."
There's a long history of using porn as a political tool. Dissidents in the French ruling class used erotica to attack their leaders from the 1500s until the end of the French Revolution. In the U.S., Flynt has used pornography as a vehicle to criticize obscenity laws and hypocritical conservative values. And the new wave of Trump porn paints him as a sexist, fascist egomaniac. Hustler's The Donald shows Trump sitting back and reading Mein Kampf while Ivanka and Melania fool around on the bed next to him. In a later scene, two blonde actresses stand with their backsides facing the room, their skirts hiked up to expose their butt cheeks. Evan Stone, playing Trump, stands between them wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat, masturbating with his right hand and screaming "Donald Trump" while he comes.
Dominatrix and director Maitresse Madeline Marlowe has made two Trump parodies, Make America Gape Again and Crucible Gangbang,both of which depict a looming threat to free expression. In Make America Gape Again, Marlowe intersperses news footage from Trump's campaign with scenes of five men wearing paper Trump masks gangbanging a woman dressed in an American flag, representing Lady Liberty. Crucible Gangbang, a parody of Arthur Miller's 1953 play, was created to protest his election, according to AVN Magazine. "While porn may seem an unlikely place for politics, it's crucial that all of us use whatever platform we have to speak out," she told AVN last month.
"Many people like to give lip service to the press, but it's much more than that," said Flynt, whose 1985 case, Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, resulted in parody and satire being classified as protected speech. "In many ways, it's been placed in jeopardy by the Trump presidency."
About a week after the election, porn site xHamster launched a casting call for its very own Donald Trump. xHamster plans to produce political parodies throughout Trump's term and wants to find "the right talent" to portray the country's 45th president, said Alex Hawkins, the company's chief marketing officer.
The goal is to avoid clichés—no The Oral Office or Hail to the Trump—Hawkins said. Instead, the xHamster team will scour Trump's Twitter stream for inspiration. "Trump's prolific tweeting, his often off-color remarks, and even his seeming bromance with Putin are all certainly fodder for potential segments," Hawkins said.
Hawkins is not the only one who sees a lucrative future in x-rated political satires, but some studios are being cautious about their next moves. Megyn Gets Trumped actor Bartholet saidhe phoned the Dogfart team the week of the election to talk about making another Trump parody. But they turned him down, he said, out of fear of repercussions now that Trump is in power.
Challenging the president on obscenity statutes or defamation law comes naturally to Flynt, a veteran free speech activist whose net worth is reportedly in the hundreds of millions. But experts say independent producers don't have the same luxury to speak out. As attorney general under Ronald Reagan, Trump adviser Edwin Meese used lawsuits to force adult film studios out of business. "A smaller company that sees a lawsuit from Donald Trump or an attack from the Justice Department often doesn't have the resources to fight it," Stabile said. "Even if it's a just cause, a threat of a lawsuit is really enough to put a lot of companies out of business."
Despite the uncertainty, xHamster has more Trump parodies in the works, in an effort to be "on the leading edge of presidential porn," Hawkins said. Hustler and Brazzers representatives said they will wait and see how the presidency unfolds before filming something new. Some experts said appetites for Trump porn may die down as the novelty wears off. But they all agreed that for the moment, the one-of-a-kind president makes a compelling subject for parody porn.
"Trump is absolute gold," Hawkins said.
