Donald Trump has pledged to crack down on Internet pornography via corporate partnerships and possibly establishing a federal commission on the harmful effects of pornography, a nonprofit said Monday.
While it appears to be coincidental, Trump’s pledge comes a day after the New York Post’s Sunday edition included a full-page nude photo of Melania Trump, his wife, on its cover.
Enough is Enough, a nonprofit dedicated to confronting online pornography, child pornography, child stalking and sexual predation, published Trump’s signed pledge on Monday. Trump’s opponent Hillary Clinton refused to sign the pledge, Enough is Enough said, though her campaign told EiE that she supported its goals.
The pledge Trump signed calls for preventing the sexual exploitation of children, better enforcing Internet obscenity laws, and recognizing that exposure to Internet porn is “deforming the sexual development of younger viewers.”
“Preventing the sexual exploitation of youth online requires a multi-faceted holistic strategy with a shared responsibility between the public, industry, and government,” Donna Rice Hughes, the chief executive of Enough is Enough, said in a statement. “The need for aggressive enforcement of existing laws and adequate funding for Law Enforcement to do the job is long overdue. For nearly two decades, bi-partisan government commissions, task forces, Internet safety groups, and researchers, who have recognized the significant risks associated with unfettered Internet access by youth, and have called upon the government and law enforcement to take aggressive action.”
Why this matters: Pornography has been a wedge issue between conservatives and liberals for years. The Internet has made it simple to gain access to a vast variety of information, and there is no widely adopted mechanism for tracking or filtering illegal activities or images of those activities online. Trump appears to support the creation and implementation of those tools.
What Trump’s pledge entails
The five-point pledge calls for Trump and any other signee to agree to “aggressively enforce” existing federal laws to prevent the sexual exploitation of children online, including appointing an Attorney General who will make prosecuting those laws a “top priority.”
Other points include “serious consideration” of a Presidential Commission to examine the “harmful public impact of Internet pornography on youth, families, and the American culture.” Finally, the pledge commits to establishing corporate partnerships to implement viable technology tools and solutions to reduce the exploitation of children online.
Trump’s Twitter account, an unfiltered commentary on his thoughts of the day, hadn’t mentioned the pledge at press time on Monday. Neither had Trump’s Facebook account. Clinton’s campaign could not be immediately reached for comment.
On Sunday, the New York Post published a nude photo of Trump’s wife, Melania Trump, on its Sunday cover. Jason Miller, a senior communications adviser for the Trump campaign, appeared on CNN and called the photos “a celebration of the human body as art.”
“There’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” Miller said. “She’s a beautiful woman.”
Updated at 1:34 PM with additional details.