During my normal 3 AM newsfest last night, I saw this story on Facebook that jumped out at me — because I knew one of the names, and it was NOT Trump: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1H463SEAHd/
The name I knew: Carrie Prejean (Boller).
Why did I know that name? Because she was the star of one of the first big media cases I worked on. She was also a conservative who lied about the facts of the case. This is just another one of the millions of data points my brain uses when I evaluate someone’s credibility.
Here’s the story — back in 2009, this woman named Carrie Prejean was running for Miss USA (she was Miss California at the time). During a pageant, a famous gay blogger (Perez Hilton) asked Carrie about her views on same-sex marriage. That was a HUGE political issue at the time, because gay marriage was NOT legal in most places.
Carrie’s answer was (to paraphrase): Fuck you fags, burn in hell because Jesus loves me, not you!
That’s obviously NOT what she said, but that was how many in the LGBTQ community took it.
OK, so what does any of this have to do with me? Well, in late 2007, I was hired to represent a new “gossip” website called DirtyScottsdale.com. At the time it was just focused on Scottsdale, but the site quickly blew up to make national headlines.
One reason — social media barely existed at that time. It was hard for people to share hot gossip, especially regarding public figures. But DirtyScottsdale (which later became TheDirty.com) changed the game — it offered a way for people to anonymously share news in a way that could reach a HUGE audience.
I know that sounds quaint today, but trust me – in 2007, that was a MASSIVE new thing.
Can you see where this is heading? After Carrie Prejean pissed people off with her anti-gay message, someone submitted a nude photo of her to TheDirty.com….well, kind of. TheDirty never allowed full nudity, so nudity was redacted or blurred.
Honestly, in the year 2026, is this kind of photo really THAT shocking? I don’t think so….FFS — there are tons of pictures online of the First Lady, Melania Trump, with her tits out and legs spread looking every bit the eastern European hooker that she is.
But in the late 2000s, this type of image was considered racy. There was also a bigger problem — first, Carrie Prejean said she was “underage” in this image (a fact later proven to be a lie). Second, as part of her agreement to participate in the Miss USA pageant, she signed a contract PROMSING she had NEVER taken any nude or semi-nude photos. Except she did. That, too, was a lie.
This blew up into a big scandal. Trump himself had to review all of Carrie’s nudes to decide if she could keep her crown: https://www.today.com/style/will-miss-california-lose-her-title-over-photos-wbna30617975
Trump likes hot young, morally-impaired women, so he initially allowed Carrie to keep her title. Unfortunately, she continued to lie and lie and lie, trying to cover up the story. That eventually proved too much, even for Trump:
Pageant organizers investigated Prejean for violating the terms of her contract after a photograph of Prejean partially nude with her back turned to the camera appeared on a celebrity gossip blog. Prejean defended the shots as legitimate modeling but also claimed that the photographer was at fault because he continued to shoot her while the wind blew open her vest. Miss USA owner Donald Trump agreed, stating, “We are in the 21st century. We have determined the pictures taken are fine” and that “in some cases the pictures were lovely.” …
Despite his initial support, Trump agreed to terminate Prejean’s contract on June 10, 2009, citing “continued breach of contract issues”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrie_Prejean
Moral of the story? Simple – I cannot count the number of times I’ve worked on a case, had someone lie to me, and then everyone just moves on. But it’s nice to know that after Trump fired Carrie for lying, he apparently re-hired for (to work on a “religious freedom” panel?), and then he fired her again.
But yes, do tell me how rare it is for ANYONE to lie….
