Post Distorts History of Presidential Efforts to Fight Child Sex Trafficking
Quick Take
Efforts to stop child sex trafficking in the U.S. have been underway for decades, led by presidents including Joe Biden. But an Instagram post makes the false claims that former President Donald Trump was the first to “acknowledge that children are being sold for sex in the U.S.” and that Biden “rescinded” a Trump order addressing the problem.
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The conspiracy theory movement known as QAnon has spread the baseless claim that former President Donald Trump is battling a child sex-trafficking ring led by prominent Democrats and Hollywood stars, as we’ve previously written.
Trump’s role in the fight against sex trafficking is further distorted in a Feb. 26 Instagram post, which falsely claims Trump was the “1st President in U.S. History to acknowledge that children are being sold for sex in the U.S.”
The post also wrongly claims President Joe Biden “rescinded Trump’s Executive Order that helped combat child sex trafficking” on Biden’s second day in office. The post received more than 2,000 likes. A replica of the claim, posted on the same day to Truth Social, received more than 1,500 likes.
The claims aren’t new. On June 14, a Twitter user shared a clip of Jaco Booyens, an anti-sex trafficking activist, being interviewed on the conservative channel Real America’s Voice.
Booyens claimed that Trump was the “first president in U.S. history to acknowledge that children are being sold for sex in this country [and] first president to open an office in the White House to form
