Trump, Vance pushing anti-transgender attacks in campaign's last days

Donald Trump watches as a video plays during a campaign rally.

By Bill Barrow

Nov. 1, 2024 Updated 1:22 PM PT

ATLANTA — Donald Trump has made his opposition to transgender rights central to his closing argument before election day, using demeaning language and misrepresentations to paint an exceedingly narrow slice of the U.S. population as a threat to national identity.

The former president and Republican nominee’s campaign and aligned political action committees have spent tens of millions of dollars on advertising attacking Democratic rival Kamala Harris for her support for transgender rights.

Trump’s speeches now feature a video mocking transgender people and their place in the U.S. military. The montage draws loud boos at his rallies, as do his false claims about female athletes and his mocking of what he says is a trans woman lifting weights.

“We will get ... transgender insanity the hell out of our schools, and we will keep men out of women’s sports,” Trump said at his recent Madison Square Garden rally, to the approving roar from the crowd of 20,000-plus. He regularly claims, falsely, that “your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation” that changed their sex.

His running mate, JD Vance, claimed Thursday that white teens in the “middle class or upper middle class” can identify as trans to more easily get into elite universities.

“Is there a dynamic that’s going on where if you become trans, that’s the way to reject your white privilege?” Vance asked podcaster Joe Rogan. “That’s the only social signifier — the only one that is available in the hyper-woke mindset — is if you become gender nonbinary.”

While often overshadowed by their emphasis on migrants, the GOP candidates’ broadsides against LGBTQ+ people now seem more frequent and ominous, intended to stir their core supporters and sway moderates. Their campaign has increasingly focused on Trump’s idea of hypermasculinity, including his recent and repeated use of a female name to refer to CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, who is gay.

The vice president has pushed back at times, noting that military personnel had access to gender-affirming treatment even during Trump’s presidency.

“I will follow the law,” Harris told Fox News last month, also noting that “these surgeries were available on a medical necessity basis to people in the federal prison system” under Trump.

On “The Breakfast Club” podcast this week, she said Trump was “living in a glass house” with such attacks and that just two U.S. service members have sought transgender surgery, and noting that millions of people could lose their health insurance if Trump and Republicans succeed in efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare.

Harris’ aides see Trump’s culture war approach as appealing only to his hardline supporters, ceding issues such as the economy that resonate with more voters.

Polls show voters divided on transgender rights. About half of Americans, 51%, say changing one’s gender is morally wrong, according to a Gallup poll from May. About 7 in 10 Americans say transgender athletes should only be allowed to compete on sports teams that match their birth gender, according to a 2023 Gallup poll. Yet about 6 in 10 Americans oppose laws that ban treatments and medical procedures that help transgender individuals align with their gender identity, according to a Gallup poll from May. About a third favor such bans.

Civil rights advocates are concerned what a second Trump administration would mean for LGBTQ+ rights, and say his message threatens the security of transgender people, regardless of who wins Tuesday.

Trump has said he would ask Congress to pass a bill stating there are “only two genders” and to ban hormonal or surgical treatment for trans minors nationwide.

Sarah Kate Ellis, president of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group GLAAD, said Trump is attacking “vulnerable people” who make up about 1% of the population “and already are marginalized” by much of society.

“There’s a lack of understanding, and there’s a lack of humanizing about who trans people are,” Ellis said. “It’s not easy to be transgendered, to wake up every day in a body that might not fit who you are, and instead of having empathy, they’re met with hostility. That’s the culture Trump is creating.”

Writer and activist Charlotte Clymer said on X that it “sucks to watch any sports event as a trans person right now because of the Trump commercials,” adding: “It’s demoralizing to know this entire subset of people sees us as subhuman.”

Since Sept. 1, Trump’s campaign has spent about $35million airing three ads based on statements Harris made in 2019 while running for Democrats’ 2020 presidential nomination. Clips show her affirming her support for federal policies that allow prisoners access to gender-affirming hormones and potentially surgery.

“It sounds insane because it is insane,” the announcer states in an ad that, as of Thursday, had aired almost 28,000 times in presidential battlegrounds and on national TV. “Kamala’s agenda is ‘they-them,’ not you,’” the ad concludes, referring to gender-neutral pronouns.

Answering an ACLU questionnaire during her 2019 presidential campaign, Harris wrote: “I support policies ensuring that federal prisoners and detainees are able to obtain medically necessary care for gender transition, including surgical care.”

As California attorney general, she worked to grant access to such care for state prisoners. But Harris is correct in noting that similar federal policies were in place under Trump for immigrant detainees and federal prisoners.

At Trump’s rallies, he often addresses LGBTQ+ issues with generalizations and emotional appeals. He routinely blasts U.S. military leaders as being “woke.”

The spoof video that plays at his rallies alternates between scenes of intense military training, sometimes with drill sergeants yelling at troops, and scenes depicting what are meant to portray LGBTQ+ members of the military, each displaying exaggerated feminine affects.

Barrow writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.