ATLANTA– Donald Trump has made his opposition to transgender rights central to his closing arguments before Election Day, using derogatory language and misrepresentations to portray an extremely small segment of the US population as a threat to national identity.
The former president and Republican candidate campaign and aligned political action committees have spent tens of millions of dollars on advertising attacking the Democratic nominee and vice president Kamala Harris for her previous statements in support of transgender rights.
His rally speeches now include a parody video mocking transgender people and their place in the U.S. military. The assembly, alternated with clips from the Vietnam War film “Full Metal Jacket,” typically draws loud boos at his rallies, just like Trump’s false claims about female athletes and his mocking impression from what he says is a trans woman lifting weights.
“We will take transgender insanity out of our schools, and we will keep men out of women’s sports,” Trump said during his recent speech. Madison Square Garden meetingwhich drew a roar of approval from the more than 20,000 people.
Although often overshadowed by Trump’s emphasis on immigrants, his comments against LGBTQ people appear to have become more frequent and ominous in the final days of the campaign, designed both to stir his core supporters and to draw votes from more moderate voters who might not work with Trump at other times. business. It’s part of an overall campaign in which Trump has recently promoted his own brand of hyper-masculinity refer multiple times to CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, who is gay, under the name of a woman, “Allison Cooper.”
Harris has largely ignored Trump’s attacks but has walked back his characterization of her positions, noting that federal policies were in place during Trump’s presidency that allowed U.S. military personnel access to gender-affirming medical care and transgender surgery.
“I will follow the law,” Harris said in a Fox News interview on Oct. 17. “And it’s a law that Donald Trump has actually followed. You probably know it by now. It is a matter of public record that under the Donald Trump administration, these surgeries were available on a medical-need basis to people in the federal prison system.”
On “The Breakfast Club” podcast earlier this week, she added that Trump was “living in a glass house” with his attacks. She compared the number of people involved: She said two U.S. service members have requested transgender surgery, while millions of people could be stripped of their health insurance if Trump and Republicans succeed in their efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Polls show a divided electorate on transgender rights. About half of Americans, 51%, say changing gender is morally wrong May Gallup Poll. About seven in ten Americans believe transgender athletes should only compete on sports teams that match their birth gender. 2023 Gallup Poll. Still, about six in 10 Americans oppose laws that ban treatments and medical procedures that help transgender people adjust to their gender identity, according to a survey. May Gallup Poll. About a third are in favor of such bans.
Civil rights advocates, meanwhile, are raising concerns about what a second Trump administration would mean for LGBTQ rights, saying his campaign messages already threaten the safety of transgender people, regardless of who has the upper hand.
Trump has promised to focus transgender people if they are elected. He has said he would ask Congress to pass a bill declaring there are “only two genders” and banning hormonal or surgical procedures for transgender minors in all 50 states.
Sarah Kate Ellis, president of the LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD, said Trump’s approach targets “vulnerable people” who make up about 1% of the population “and are already marginalized by much of society.”
“Why are we debating medical care for transgender people? Because there is a lack of understanding and a lack of humanization about who transgender people are,” Ellis said. “It’s not easy being transgender, waking up every day in a body that may not reflect who you are, and instead of having empathy, they’re met with hostility. That is the culture that Trump is creating.”
Writer and activist Charlotte Clymer added on social media platform we do that too. see the ads, and it’s demoralizing to know that this entire group of people sees us as subhuman.
Trump’s campaign has spent about $35 million since September 1 airing three ads based on statements Harris made in 2019 as a candidate for the Democrats’ 2020 presidential nomination. Clips show Harris affirming her support for federal policies that allow federal prisoners access to medical care, including gender-affirming hormone treatments and possibly transgender surgery.
“It sounds insane because it is insane,” the announcer said in an ad that aired nearly 28,000 times on presidential battlefields and on national television Thursday. “Kamala’s agenda is ‘them, not you,’” the ad concludes, referring to non-gender-specific pronouns.
Harris wrote in an ACLU questionnaire during her 2019 presidential campaign: “I support policies that ensure that federal prisoners and detainees can receive medically necessary gender transition care, including surgical care, while incarcerated or detained.”
She also worked as California’s attorney general to provide state prisoners with access to such care. But Harris is right to note that similar federal policies were in place under the Trump presidency, both for immigrant detainees and federal prisoners.
At Trump’s rallies, he often discusses LGBTQ issues with generalizations and emotional appeals. He routinely castigates U.S. military leaders for being “woke,” blaming Harris and President Joe Biden.
The parody video playing on screens at Trump’s rallies alternates between scenes of intense military training, sometimes featuring drill sergeants yelling at troops, and scenes depicting so-called LGBTQ members of the military, each of whom are overly feminine show feelings. The final scenes, the video states, reflect the US military under Biden and Harris.
By the time Trump takes the stage, several speakers have prepared the audience for the issue.
“We are in the middle of a national identity crisis. Faith in God, patriotism, hard work, family – these things are gone to be replaced by ‘wokeism’ and transgenderism” and other philosophies, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said at Madison Square Garden. “These are symptoms of a deeper void of purpose and meaning in our country, and right now we must step up and fill that void with our own vision.”
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Associated Press writer Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.