Trump Gives Stunning Answer on Trans Rights — Completely at Odds with Campaign’s ‘They/Them’ Attack Ads
President-elect Donald Trump drew curious distance from one of the most significant issues he ran on during his presidential campaign: transgender rights.
“Kamala is for They/Them, Donald Trump is for Us,” announced the famous ad many credit as the defining Trump pitch of the campaign. The spot featured Charlamagne tha God and DJ Envy lamenting Vice President Kamala Harris’s support for federally funded gender reassignment surgery as well as imagery of trans members of the Biden-Harris administration.
The final tagline of the attack ad read: “Kamala even supports letting biological men compete against our girls in their sports. Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher argued in a post-election column that this ad, aired extensively nationally and in swing state media markets, was an enormous factor in Trump’s winning. Christopher wrote, “The key to Trump’s victory was in the last line of that ad’s voice-over.”
Yet, despite the popularity of the trans issue among Trump supporters, the president-elect distanced himself from the subject when asked about it in a new interview.
Trump sat with Time magazine for an interview after being named its Person of the Year, and was pressed on his past comments about transgender people being able to use whatever bathroom they chose:
TIME: Can I shift to the transgender issue? Obviously, sort of a major issue during the campaign. In 2016, you said that transgender people could use whatever bathroom they chose. Do you still feel that way?
TRUMP: When was that?
TIME: In 2016.
TRUMP: I don’t want to get into the bathroom issue. Because it’s a very small number of people we’re talking about, and it’s ripped apart our country, so they’ll have to settle whatever the law finally agrees. I am a big believer in the Supreme Court, and I’m going to go by their rulings, and so far, I think their rulings have been rulings that people are going along with, but we’re talking about a very small number of people, and we’re talking about it, and it gets massive coverage, and it’s not a lot of people.
TIME: But on that note, there’s a big fight on this in Congress now. The incoming trans member from Delaware, Sarah McBride, says we should all be focused on more important issues. Do you agree?
TRUMP: I do agree with that. On that—absolutely. As I was saying, it’s a small number of people.
TIME:It was a big issue, though, on the campaign. I mean, one of the ads that your campaign put the most money behind was the: Trump is for us and Harris is for they / them.
TRUMP: Well, it’s true, Trump is for us.
TIME: Right. It obviously strikes a chord.
“I mean, Trump is definitely for us, okay?” the president-elect concluded. “And us is the vast, vast majority of people in this country. And also, I want to have all people treated fairly. You know, forget about majority or not majority. I want people to be treated well and fairly.”
