Donald Trump, Jr., mocked diversity on the basis of gender identity during a campaign rally in Michigan on Halloween.
“They’re more concerned about the 9,276 genders,” Trump said during the October 31 event in a lot adjacent to Williams Gun Sight Company in Genesee County, according to Detroit News. “I can’t list them all. I don’t have enough time and they don’t even know which ones they are. There’s a few more since I started speaking a few minutes ago.”
The 42-year-old son of President Donald Trump, speaking near Flint, made those comments while arguing that Democrats have focused too heavily on queer issues and not enough on blue-collar workers. He has been making a series of transphobic and otherwise disparaging comments about the LGBTQ community of late — and apparently he and his father think that’s a winning strategy.
President’s son continues making inflammatory, base-pumping remarks about gender non-conforming individuals
Just days before Halloween, Trump tried to throw cold water on a human rights complaint filed by transgender blogger Jessica Yaniv, whose application to be a contestant in the Canada Galaxy Pageant was rejected because she had not undergone gender-affirming surgery, according to a story on The Post Millennial. Yaniv sued, arguing that she faced discrimination on the basis of gender identity in violation of the Ontario Human Rights Code.
“It has nothing to do with her being Trans,” Trump tweeted on October 26 in response to that article.
Trump has often linked LGBTQ issues to political correctness, arguing that the focus on queer causes is a product of overly-sensitive leftists obsessed with identity politics.
The tweet about Yaniv was not the first time Trump has griped about transgender people on Twitter in response to a news article. In October of last year he tweeted out a story about a transgender cyclist, Rachel McKinnon of Canada, and wrote, “You can never be woke enough! Sorry to all female athletes who spent their lives mastering their games.”
It is unclear if Trump’s focus on transgender Canadians signals any hopes his father may have to buy Canada, in addition to his stated interest in the purchase of Greenland.
In his book “Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us,” which was published last year, Trump deliberately misgendered trans women when he said allowing “mediocre men to compete in women’s sports” does “a disservice to all the hardworking young women who have fought to get where they are.”
The Trump campaign appears to believe that belittling transgender people is an effective wedge issue, even if it further weakens the president’s standing in the broader queer community. A GLAAD poll on October 1 showed the incumbent trailing former Vice President Joe Biden by a wide margin among LGBTQ voters.
The GOP campaign’s willingness to write off transgender voters should come as no surprise given the Trump administration’s coordinated attacks on transgender folks in the military as well as in healthcare, housing, sports, and other areas. To that end, the campaign’s LGBTQ outreach efforts have focused primarily on drawing gay and lesbian voters, with transgender folks often being omitted.
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