As part of his 2024 campaign, Donald Trump is now declaring war against transgender people – especially transgender children – even vowing to use DOJ and Congress to make being transgender illegal under federal law, if elected President. He also promised to promote the "nuclear family," an attack on same-sex couples and families. And he pledged to use the Dept. of Education to file federal civil rights charges against local school teachers who support transgender children – or even the very concept of being transgender.
In 2015, as his first presidential campaign took shape, Trump was falsely hailed by some LGBTQ Republicans as being "pro-gay." In 2016, for a short while, Trump said transgender people should “use the bathroom they feel is appropriate,” although less than 24 hours later he reversed course. But that same year he merged two powerful culture war issues, LGBTQ rights and illegal immigration, into a combined wedge issue to attack his Democratic opponent.
"Thank you to the LGBT community! I will fight for you while Hillary brings in more people that will threaten your freedoms and beliefs," he tweeted.
It was a lie.
Fast forward to 2023.
Trump's promise on Tuesday afternoon to attack transgender Americans, despite medical evidence and expert opinions to the contrary. go much further than any other national Republican's, and it's clear he had help creating these new anti-LGBTQ policies. Right-wing extremist media promoted the ex-president's assault on this highly-vulnerable population almost immediately.
In his video he calls gender-affirming care "child sexual mutilation" and "left wing gender insanity," suggesting transgender people did not exist throughout history, which is false.
"The left wing gender insanity being pushed in our children is an act of child abuse very simple," Trump, in his unique oratorical style, begins in a nearly four-minute video posted on Rumble and on his Truth Social platform. "Here's my plan to stop the chemical, physical and emotional mutilation of our youth."
Nearly every major medical organization recognizes and supports gender-affirming care for children.
Just last August Dr. Moira Szilagyi, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the largest professional organization of its kind, said: "There is strong consensus among the most prominent medical organizations worldwide that evidence-based, gender-affirming care for transgender children and adolescents is medically necessary and appropriate. It can even be lifesaving. The decision of whether and when to start gender-affirming treatment, which does not necessarily lead to hormone therapy or surgery, is personal and involves careful consideration by each patient and their family."
Trump is promising to make that care illegal, and to sign a federal law "establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth," and one "prohibiting child sexual mutilation."
"On day one," Trump declared, "I will revoke Joe Biden's cruel policies on so called gender affirming care. Ridiculous, a process that includes giving puberty blockers, mutating their physical appearance and ultimately performing surgery on minor children. Can you believe this?"
Dr. Szilagyi spoke to that falsehood last year, writing: "Critics of our gender-affirming care policy mischaracterize it as pushing medical or surgical treatments on youth; in fact, the policy calls for the opposite: a holistic, collaborative, compassionate approach to care with no end goal or agenda."
Trump also promised to "sign a new executive order instructing every federal agency to cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age. I will then ask Congress to permanently stop federal taxpayer dollars from being used to promote or pay for these procedures and pass a law prohibiting child sexual mutilation."
"In all 50 states it'll go very quickly. I will declare that any hospital or health care provider that participates in the chemical or physical mutilation of minor youth will no longer meet federal health and safety standards for Medicaid and Medicare and will be terminated from the program immediately."
Trump also promised to turn the executive branch into an anti-transgender machine for his personal political ends.
"The Department of Justice will investigate Big Pharma and the big hospital networks to determine whether they have deliberately covered up horrific long term side effects of sex transitions in order to get rich at the expense of vulnerable patients, in this case, very vulnerable. We will also investigate whether Big Pharma or others have illegally marketed hormones and puberty blockers which are in no way licensed or approved for this use."
He also promised his "Department of Education will inform states and school districts that if any teacher or school official suggests to a child that they could be trapped in the wrong body, they will be faced with severe consequences including potential civil rights violations for sex discrimination, and the elimination of federal funding."
Trump did not waver in using the full power of the federal government to target and attack transgender children and LGBTQ families, while using local school teachers to carry out his pogrom.
"As part of our new credentialing body for teachers, we will promote positive education about the nuclear family, the roles of mothers and fathers and celebrating rather than erasing the things that make men and women different and unique."
"I will ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth. The bill will also make clear that Title IX prohibits men from participating in women's sports and we will protect the rights of parents from being forced to allow their minor child to assume a gender which is new and an identity without the parents' consent," he said, appearing to correct himself by adding: "The identity will not be new, and it will not be without parental consent."
"No serious countries should be telling its children that they were born with the wrong gender, a concept that was never heard of in all of human history, he declared, which is false. "Nobody's ever heard of this, what's happening today. It was all when the radical left invented just a few years ago, under my leadership this madness will end."
Nearly every anti-LGBTQ claim Trump made in under four minutes is false or contrary to accepted medical and scientific studies and practice.