This is, maybe, the most important question you will ever ponder. Would you have sex with Donald Trump if it meant he would immediately suspend his presidential campaign? Would you sacrifice your body to save your country? Would it save your country? Would you ever have sex again?




“My heart is pounding,” Jezebel staff writer Joanna Rothkopf told me. “I’ve honestly never thought harder.” The mainstream consensus has seemed to be, thus far, that Trump’s continued presence in the race—while horrible for the country and its reputation abroad, having reawakened America’s apparently large pro-slavery contingent—is a huge advantage to the eventual Democratic nominee, as he has offended just about every minority population, and Gallup recently announced his unfavorable rating (60%) as the highest ever recorded, and...I mean, you don’t need a recap, at this point we’re all well aware of what he is.

Jonathan Chait recently argued in New York Magazine that a Trump presidency might not actually be quite the apocalyptic scenario that liberal nightmares are made of, comparing him to horrible man and more okay governator Arnold Schwarzenegger, who easily tap-danced away from his original right-wing policies:

The only thing Schwarzenegger really craved was popularity. Running for office as an exercise in ego gratification may not be as good a thing as running as a serious candidate with good ideas, but it’s much better than running as a serious candidate with bad ideas.


But is it reasonable to assume that one stupid, megalomaniacal man might behave similarly to another, given vastly different political landscapes? Haven’t we learned our lesson that Trump is consistently unpredictable, and almost always in the worst way? Do we want a Republican nominee who excites people and awakens first-time voters, especially if his likely opponent seems to have the opposite effect?

Would you fuck this problem away? Could you live with yourself afterwards? Could you live with yourself if you didn’t, and he became the president, and Sarah Palin became his Secretary of State, and your favorite bloggers were disappeared for being political dissidents? On the other hand, what if you had sex with Trump, he dropped out, you found out you were pregnant, John Kasich won the presidency, abortion was outlawed, and you were forced to bring his seed to term?

A word from my colleagues:

Jia Tolentino:

After thinking about this so hard that I hijacked a dinner hang to ask two friends if they’d fuck Trump to get him to drop out of the race (my boyfriend was like “JIA YOU’RE JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS THAT TRUMP DROPPING OUT WOULD BE GOOD FOR THE COUNTRY” and I was like “NO **YOU** ARE, THAT’S THE WHOLE GODDAMN HINGE OF THE QUESTION”; he then concluded that he does want Trump out of the race but wouldn’t fuck him, which is unpatriotic) I have decided that I would in fact NOT fuck Trump to get him to drop out of the race. I would rather play the hypothetical of delegate-gobbling Trump becoming the GOP candidate and instigating a shitshow of a general like we’ve never seen before—with his deep, disgusting, uninformed, previously politically inactive, bigoted, white-supremacist base brought more fully into the limelight than his persona, which now contains no surprises; and with the Republican party eating itself and pooping out a faction that is reasonable, reform-minded and healthy, which would be good for everyone. This is a bad scenario whose unlikely worst-case outcome is a Trump presidency, which would be farther towards center in some respects than some of our other horrible options, and would at least be an inescapable statement about what American exceptionalism actually entails in 2016, and would maybe ensure a cultural backlash against the fanatical hubris of ultra-rich white people the way Obama’s presidency has invoked backlash against black Americans. I don’t know. Everything’s bad.


Anna Merlan:

No. I love myself more than I love any electoral outcome, and besides, it might make a Cruz presidency just slightly more likely, which is intolerable. HOWEVER... The fact is that I am fucking sick to death of Donald Trump, I am sick of writing about him, I am sick of coming up with new ways to accurately describe him, and there’s a slim chance that him dropping out could re-focus the race on why Ted Cruz is a hideous person and why Marco Rubio has no business governing anything. It’s probably time for this clown car of horror to get a little bit smaller. For that reason, I would, if called upon by my country, if caught on a day when I’m feeling particularly patriotic, consider having sex with Donald Trump. I would need an excellent glass (bucket) of wine beforehand, I would need to be high as hell, it would have to be in a position where I didn’t have to see his face, and I would need a guarantee that it wouldn’t last longer than like two minutes. (I don’t think it would.) And then I would need a six-week vacation, hiking alone through a jungle somewhere and weeping at night alone in a tent, a gentle rain battering the sides. A cleansing rain. A healing rain.

I’m getting sad and stressed out just thinking about the logistics here.

Kelly Faircloth:

I’m proceeding under the assumption that Cruz is so clearly unappealing that even evangelicals can’t bring themselves to vote for him. I can’t bring myself to believe Trump will ever be president, but the mere possibility is so appalling that I would willingly throw myself on this grenade for my country. However I would not say no to a national moment of silence as a gesture of thanks.


Madeleine Davies:

I just don’t think it would help the election at all. He’s not the only idiot running and, if anything, he splits the idiot vote. Plus I find him physically repulsive :)


Joanna Rothkopf:

This is one of the hardest, if not the hardest philosophical question I have ever been faced with. On one hand, I have the ability to be a patriot and protect my country. If I pick no, and a Trump administration happens, I would probably feel bad for the rest of my life. But there are so many variables. What if Trump dropping out leads to Cruz winning all his supporters? I would argue a Cruz presidency is even worse. What if him dropping out butterfly effects in other ways, like maybe he feels so good after we do it that he buys all the water in the world and we all go thirsty? I couldn’t live with that either. I think the possible results of me saying yes are worse than the possible results of me saying no, and if I say no my life wouldn’t be ruined with the memory of what would inevitably be a traumatic experience. So my answer is no.


Ashley Feinberg:

I’d be more likely to have sex with Cruz if it meant he’d drop out.

(Ed. note from Jia: same.)

Julianne Escobedo Shepherd:

Probably, because even though that would put Cruz or Rubio in a position to win the nomination, Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric is extremely dangerous as it riles up his racist base and seems to validate their notions that Mexicans, Muslims, and gays are responsible for “destroying” America’s “greatness.” But we’d have to do it doggy style because I’m not ever trying to look at his disgusting carrot dick.


Alex Pareene:

I want Trump to stay in the race to destroy the GOP. I would withhold my affection.


Clover Hope:

I would not bone Trump. The country will be FINE. I think.

What do you think? Would you screw Donald Trump out of the race?


Last time on Would U?, we asked: Would you have sex with any of the terrible men from Vanderpump Rules? 20% of you said “No!”, 33% would have sex with Tom Schwartz, 17% would have sex with Peter, 12% would have sex with Jax from Season 1, 7.5% would have sex with Tom Sandoval, 3% would have sex with Max, 2.7% would have sex with Shay, 2.3% would have sex with James, 2.1% would have sex with Jax in his current incarnation.

Contact the author at ellie@jezebel.com .