Is Donald Trump a major donor to NAMBLA, the controversial organization that aims to legalize pedophilia?

To anyone perusing online political message boards — primarily Reddit — the allegation has surfaced everywhere in the past few days, connecting the GOP candidate to one of the most reviled organizations today, the North American Man-Boy Love Association. The story behind this viral hoax is actually connected to one of the major campaign complaints against Donald Trump.

To start, for anyone unable to pick up the point of the accusation, there is no truth to the rumor that Donald Trump is a donor to NAMBLA. It’s an ugly smear, even against the controversial Trump, and one with absolutely no basis in reality.

But that’s the point. The allegation first surfaced this week in a discussion about Donald Trump refusing to release his tax returns, taking a page out of Trump’s playbook when it comes to political arguments.

The accusation was posed as a hypothetical question, trying to connect Trump to an organization that would mean the end of his political career.

“But why doesn’t Trump want to release his? Could it be because he donated a sizable amount of money to NAMBLA and he wants to cover it up? I’m not saying Trump donated money to NAMBLA, but people are saying that. It’s something I’ve heard, but I don’t believe Donald Trump donated several million dollars to NAMBLA over the last several years. Still, if he did that would be a great reason to not release his tax returns. But look, I’m not here to say whether or not Donald Trump donated millions to NAMBLA, I’m just here to let you know that every candidate has released his tax returns over the last 40 years, so there has to be a reason he doesn’t, and several very smart people are saying he contributed millions of dollars to NAMBLA.”

The phrasing of the NAMBLA accusation uses some of the exact wording Donald Trump has used when making inaccurate claims of his own. In particular, it seems to reflect the tactic Trump used in 2011 when accusing President Barack Obama of faking his birth certificate.

They racistly demanded birth certificate from @POTUS, but Trump hasn't released his tax returns. #DontBooVotehttps://t.co/kHuZpvRIwr — Sam White (@samwhiteout) August 1, 2016

At the time, Trump claimed that he sent a team of investigators to Hawaii and implied that they found evidence that Obama was not born in the United States.

“I have people that actually have been studying it and they cannot believe what they’re finding,” he said in an interview on the Today show.

“His grandmother in Kenya said he was born in Kenya, and she was there and witnessed the birth. He doesn’t have a birth certificate or he hasn’t shown it,” Trump told Meredith Vieira. “He has what’s called a certificate of live birth. That is something that’s easy to get. When you want a birth certificate, it’s hard to get.”

[Photo by Evan Vucci/AP Images]

In the end, Barack Obama ended up releasing his full birth certificate, smashing the rumors that he wasn’t born in the United States. But that’s not the only time Donald Trump has cited unnamed “people” when pushing unproven and unfounded allegations of his own.

The Washington Post even broke down the number of times Trump has spread conspiracies, including another apparent smear of Barack Obama. In the wake of the June shooting at an Orlando nightclub that left 49 people dead, Trump appeared to imply that Obama was purposely ignoring the issue of Islamic terrorism.

“There are a lot of people that think maybe he doesn’t want to get it. A lot of people think maybe he doesn’t want to know about it,” Trump said on the Today show. “I happen to think that he just doesn’t know what he’s doing, but there are many people that think maybe he doesn’t want to get it. He doesn’t want to see what’s really happening. And that could be.”

That strategy has now appeared to backfire with the viral allegations that Donald Trump is a major donor to NAMBLA, which has spread beyond Reddit and onto Twitter and other corners of the internet. So far, Trump has offered no response to the hoax.

[Photo by Evan Vucci/AP Images]