Does a viral image show a real journalistic article saying that Melania Trump used to work as a recreational drug seller at a New York City gay bar in the 1990s? No, that's not true: The writers named in the shared byline did not work together in 2021, the year the article claims to have been published. Lead Stories found no credible reporting that Melania Trump sold the recreational inhalant drug known as 'poppers' at a New York City gay bar.
The claim appeared in an image (archived here) published on Instagram on May 6, 2026, under the caption:
Melania was a popper girl. The more you know.
Dig the song? Follow @januariusmusic
The text in the shared image continued:
30 Years Ago, Melania Trump Was a 'Poppers Girl' in East Village Gay Bar
By Kenny Wassus and Cait Munro
Photos from 1991 show Mrs. Trump selling bottles of RUSH (isobutyl nitrite) and cigarettes inside Boy Bar, a popular gay cruising spot on St. Marks Place. Poppers have a relaxation effect on involuntary muscles, such as the throat and anus.
This is what the picture looked like on Instagram at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @secretsocietyunderground on Instagram.)
The image of the alleged article has been online since May 2021 (archived here), when it was uploaded to the image-hosting service Imgur. That version of the picture showed the article's publication date: May 15, 2021.
(Image source: Imgur.)
When Lead Stories searched for the writers' names using a date range covering that day and the next, Google showed no matches (archived here).
Kenny Wassus and Cait Munro are real people. They used to work in journalism and shared multiple bylines (archived here) at New York Magazine. However, according to Wassus' LinkedIn profile (archived here), he left New York Magazine in May 2019. Munro, as her LinkedIn profile (archived here) says, had stopped working for the outlet even earlier, in October 2016. They never worked for the same media outlet at the same time again, and, therefore, they could not co-author an article in 2021.
A Google search across the New York Magazine website for the article's title showed no such piece (archived here).
No journalistic articles indexed by Google News (archived here) corroborated the claim in the viral image.
