Unless you were living under a rock without a good wi-fi signal yesterday, you likely heard that former congressman-turned-NYC mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner is embroiled in yet another weird/hilarious sexting scandal. This time, he used the questionable pseudonym "Carlos Danger," and the offending messages and dick pics were sent over Formspring and Facebook—no one say this man didn't learn from his previous mistake of tweeting out a NSFW pic to all of his followers when he meant to direct message it.
The allegations broke after a woman, who Buzzfeed identifies as Sydney Leathers, sent in a handful of screencaps and pictures to Nik Richie at The Dirty (note, they are very NSFW), and claimed that the man she was speaking with—Carlos Danger, which will never not be funny—was in fact disgraced politician Anthony Weiner. There were no timestamps on the messages, but the site reported that she specified they took place last summer, long after Weiner left rehab for a "sex addiction" following his previous sexting scandal. Seriously, what is with men using Latin-inspired names as aliases when they're up to no good? Weiner had "Carlos Danger," Michael Vicks had "Ron Mexico" back in 2007, and that former FBI agent who was secretly spying for the Russian government, Robert Hanssen, used the alias "Ramon Garcia."
Anyway. A few hours later, Weiner held a press conference to address the rumors, his wife Huma Abedin by his side. You can watch the whole thing here, but the gist of it is that Weiner more or less admits to being behind the sexpsuedonym—"I said that other texts and photos were likely to come out, and today they have,"—but he does not reveal when they took place, probably because it was, in fact, last year. He also revealed that he does not plan to drop out on the NYC mayoral race (of which he is currently in the lead), though he said he is "sure that many of my opponents do want me to drop out."
This scandal is different from the last one in a few ways, but the biggest two are without a doubt that it broke when Weiner was at the height of his mayoral campaign—Leathers told The Dirty she came out with the story now because "he’s running for mayor of NYC so I felt I should get my story out there"—and because Huma Abedin, Weiner's wife, is actually speaking out this time. During the press conference yesterday, Huma took to the podium after Weiner to voice her support, saying, "I love him. I have forgiven him. And as we have said from the beginning, we are moving forward."
Abedin, who is a longtime advisor to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has also penned an essay for Harper's Bazaar to explain Weiner's decision to run for NYC mayor. The entire essay isn't available to read yet—the issue hits newsstands on August 20—but the magazine did post a preview of the essay, in which Abedin explains that she prefers to stay out of the spotlight in all facets of her life, but is speaking out now because, "quite simply, I love my husband, I love my city, and I believe in what he wants to do for the people of New York."
There's no telling whether or not this will adversely affect Weiner's campaign—all signs would point to 'yes,' but he was in the lead prior to the scandal emerging, and he's already come back from a similar situation once before. It really begs the question of whether or not a politician's personal life should be considered when reviewing their plans for when they're in office.
Still, though—who wants to bet that NYC is going to get a lot of write-in ballots for "Carlos Danger" during this upcoming election?
[via The Daily Beast // The Dirty // Harper's Bazaar]
