Trump can’t stop obsessing over trans athletes

President Donald Trump delivers a speech to the White House Religious Liberty Commission on Sept. 8.

Sex scandal-plagued President Donald Trump delivered remarks to the White House Religious Liberty Commission on Monday, seizing the opportunity to attack a familiar GOP target: transgender athletes.

"Imagine men playing in women's sports,” Trump told the gathering of the so-called anti-Christian bias committee. “So you're up 15 years ago, I guess, probably 10 years ago, but 15 years ago, and somebody said, ‘We will not allow men to play in women's sports.’ People would look at the person and say, ‘What’s he talking—is he crazy?’ It happened. And not only that, the Democrats don't want to give it up.” 

He went on to boast about the fact that he officially restricted gender in the United States to “male” or “female.” 

“They say it's an 80-20 issue,” he continued. “I say, ‘It's a 97-3 issue. Okay?’ And transgender’s about the same. It's crazy. It's sort of a crazy thing. It's a world gone wrong. Just a world gone wrong. And I made the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders. You're going to hate this—male and female."

The Trump administration’s relentless focus on the statistically minuscule number of transgender athletes threatens funding of women’s sports more broadly and is a clear attempt to reinstate the barbaric, bigoted practice of LGBTQ+ “conversion therapy.” 

Claims that transgender athletes have special physical advantages is not backed by the evidence. But what is is the fact that women in sports face significantly more physical and mental abuse than their male counterparts—and report nearly twice the rate of sexual abuse.

Meanwhile, Trump—a former party pal of Jeffrey Epstein’s—has shown little interest in pursuing policies that might protect women athletes from actual predators. Go figure.