Weinergate is the nickname for the May 2011 Twitter scandal in which Congressman Anthony Weiner's account publicly posted a photo of a bulging crotch in boxer briefs that was supposed to be a private direct message.

Where did Weinergate come from?

It started on May 27th, 2011, when the photo went out from Weiner's Twitter account to a 21-year-old journalism student, and the Watergate-style label was in wide circulation within days.

What does Weinergate mean?

The name splices Weiner's surname with the political '-gate' suffix inherited from Watergate, and the term is reused as shorthand for any sexting scandal involving a public official.

How do you use Weinergate?

People typically use it when writing or joking about a politician caught sending a lewd message, treating it as a template name the way other '-gate' coinages work.

Is Weinergate still popular?

The term is mostly a historical reference now, tied to the 2011 incident and the follow-up scandals that led to Weiner's 2017 federal prison sentence.

Weinergate

2011catchphrase / scandal nicknameclassic

Published October 5, 2026

Weinergate is the Watergate-style nickname that stuck to a May 2011 Twitter mess involving New York Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner, after his account publicly posted a crotch shot that was meant to be a direct message. The flub ended his congressional career inside a month and turned his surname into shorthand for every politician sexting slip that came after.

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Overview

The label itself is a straight Watergate riff, splicing the suffix '-gate' onto Weiner's conveniently unfortunate surname1. The joke writes itself in two directions at once, political cover-up and anatomical pun, which is why late-night hosts, headline writers and Urban Dictionary entries latched onto it inside a week. In the years after 2011 it became the default joke tag for any public figure caught accidentally broadcasting a sext, and reporters applied it to Weiner's own repeat scandals in 2013 and 20162.

The core image people associate with the term is the original tweeted photo, a bulge in grey boxer briefs5, later paired with Weiner's long chain of denials, admissions and press-conference apologies. Jon Stewart turned the first week of coverage into running Daily Show material, including a segment where he openly questioned the picture's authenticity while disclosing that Weiner was a personal friend5.

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Origin & Background

Platform

Twitter

Date

2011

On May 27th, 2011, Anthony Weiner's Twitter account posted a link to a yfrog photo of a man in grey boxer briefs with a visible erection, directed at a 21-year-old journalism student at a Washington State community college5. Weiner's initial public line was that his account had been hacked. On June 1st, journalist Anthony De Rosa published an EXIF-data breakdown of the picture on his Tumblr showing that its metadata did not match other photos Weiner had posted from his phone, undercutting the hack story3. Six days later Weiner called a press conference in Manhattan and admitted the tweet was his, saying he had meant to send it as a direct message 'as a joke' and that he had carried on inappropriate chats with several other women online.

How It Spread

The story moved fast. Jon Stewart ran Daily Show segments starting May 31st that mixed friend-of-the-accused disclaimers with growing skepticism about Weiner's denials5. After the June 6th press conference, Weiner announced his resignation on June 16th and formally left Congress five days later8. The vacated Queens-Brooklyn seat went to Republican businessman Bob Turner in a September 13th special election, an upset in a heavily Democratic district that national coverage read as a referendum on President Obama1.

The 'gate' tag kept getting reused on Weiner personally. In April 2013 the New York Times Magazine ran a comeback profile previewing his New York City mayoral run4. That July the gossip site The Dirty published fresh sexting screenshots Weiner had sent after his resignation under the alias 'Carlos Danger'9. In August 2016 the New York Post reported that Weiner had sent a crotch photo with his sleeping toddler son in the frame, which prompted his wife Huma Abedin to announce a separation the following day2. The following month the Daily Mail published messages Weiner had exchanged with a 15-year-old girl7.

In May 2017 Weiner pleaded guilty to a single count of transferring obscene material to a minor, and that September he was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison plus three years of supervised release6.

Timeline