Trump and Hegseth assault allegations featured prominently in pro-Iran ‘trolling’ campaign
President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have been featured recently in a series of videos that have “flooded the internet” since the United States attacked Iran in late February, videos from pro-Iran groups that prominently feature the sexual assault allegations leveled against the current president and his top Defense official.
“Trump is globally known for sex crimes and, like Hegseth, charges of sex crimes – and the Iranian videos depict the two men explicitly as rapists,” reads a report published Wednesday in The New Republic.
“In one video, [a] Lego Trump has doll-like girl figures on his bed and lap, and Hegseth is shown in military garb, repeatedly committing rape. Assaults on girls are the modus vivendi of these videos’ versions of Trump and Hegseth.”
Trump has faced sexual misconduct allegations from at least two dozen women dating back to the 1970s, and was found liable for sexual abuse by a jury in civil court in 2023. Hegseth has also faced an allegation of sexual assault, though both Trump and Hegseth have denied any wrongdoing.
While not produced by the Iranian government, the video campaign – described by The New Republic as "not idle trolling" – has been heavily promoted by Tehran.
Pro-Iran groups, particularly the anonymous student activist group Explosive News, have seized on the allegations against Trump and Hegseth, depicting Trump as a sexual abuser in a series of Lego-inspired videos generated with generative artificial intelligence, videos that have gone on to be watched by millions on social media. Hegseth has also been featured prominently in the video campaign.
As to the campaign’s core message as it relates to Trump – that the president had “the ideology of the rapist” – The New Republic’s Virginia Heffernan argued it was hard to disagree.
“In Trump, the ideology of the rapist was unmistakable a decade ago, when he crowed about the joy he takes in humiliating human beings by mauling their crotches,” Heffernan wrote. “With this war, he’s trying, as usual, for highly aestheticized spectacles of humiliation, and he’s getting them – but not for Iran. For himself, and for the United States.”