After running his reelection campaign under the banner of transphobia and leveraging the power of his office to curtail trans rights, Trump is now apparently confused as to why there’s so much discourse over trans people. In a press conference with a foreign leader, Trump went on a tangent lamenting that “everything is transgender” now.
On Wednesday, Trump met with Micheál Martin, the taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland, in front of a press conference. Launching into one of his typical incoherent rants, the president—with no prompting—brought up trans people in order to complain that everyone constantly brings up trans people.
“Everything is transgender, everybody transgender,” he said. “That is all you hear about and that is why we won the election in record numbers.” He also claimed that trans people are “demeaning women” and “hurting women very badly.”
Trump and his Republican allies are demonstrably the reason why “everything is transgender” now. His reelection campaign spent millions on campaign ads attacking the transgender community, bringing trans rights to the fore of the national discourse. His campaign even coined an anti-trans slogan in the closing weeks before the election: “Kamala is for they/them, not for you.”
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During his time with Merseyside, he and another officer exchanged several messages containing “homophobic and violent overtones.”
Almost immediately after obtaining office, Trump signed a flurry of executive orders targeting the trans community. This included making it the policy of the federal government to recognize only two sexes, banning trans athletes from women’s sports at federally funded schools, purging trans service members from the military, instigating the forced transfer of trans inmates to prisons aligning to their sex at birth, and restricting gender affirming care.
There’s also the bizarre anti-trans statements the president continues to make out of nowhere. As DOGE continues to go around gutting federal agencies that serve the public, the president excuses these actions by claiming that large amounts of federal funds have been spent on supporting trans people. The most bizarre comment came during the president’s recent address to congress, in which he falsely claimed to have stopped research on “making mice transgender.”
Trump has seen to it that transphobia will be a defining feature of his presidency, along with ill-advised tariffs and attacks on immigrants and a whole host of disruptions to American freedoms and opportunities. If Trump wants to hear less about trans people, he could start by taking the target off their backs.
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