Donald Trump said he doesn't want to talk about transgender rights issues anymore, despite demonizing the transgender community throughout his 2024 campaign.
In an interview with Time magazine published on Thursday, which named Trump "Person of the Year," Trump declined to say whether he supports transgender people who want to use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity.
"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," Trump said in the interview with Time. "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."
In the 2016 campaign, Trump said he believed that transgender people should be able to use whatever restroom they wanted, saying there were "very few complaints" about people using restrooms that correspond to their gender identity.
Yet in 2024, his campaign spent at least $215 million on ads attacking Kamala Harris for supporting transgender Americans—even though polling showed voters did not believe it was an important issue.
The fact that Trump’s campaign ran those ads and won has led to disgusting discourse from pundits, who openly speculate that Democrats are too accepting of transgender individuals and need to stop bending over backward to ensure that transgender people aren’t discriminated against.
Time asked Trump about those ads—which infamously said "Kamala Harris is for they/them. Donald Trump is for you"—and he played dumb.
"I mean, Trump is definitely for us, okay? 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," Trump told Time.
After the election, Republicans have continued to attack transgender individuals, with House Speaker Mike Johnson banning transgender women from using women's restrooms on Capitol Hill. Johnson made that rule after attention-seeking South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace forced the issue in order to block transgender Rep.-elect Sarah McBride from using women's rooms in the Capitol Complex.
Time asked Trump about the new bathroom rule on Capitol Hill, and he came dangerously close to telling Johnson and Mace that they went too far.
From the interview:
Time: “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.”
Ultimately, Trump said that he supports the Supreme Court, which gave transgender individuals a victory in January when it let stand a lower-court ruling that said banning transgender students from bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity violated Title IX. Title IX is a federal law that prohibits sexual discrimination in education.
Still, Trump refused to say whether he would change Title IX to remove protections for transgender students.
"I'm going to look at it very closely. We're looking at it right now. We're gonna look at it. We're gonna look at everything," Trump said, his favorite line when he actually has no idea what his plans are but has to give an answer. "Look, the country is torn apart. We're gonna look at everything."
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