“Kamala is for they/them. Trump is for you,” was the message of a widely aired ad for Donald Trump’ 2024 campaign.
But a resurfaced 2016 clip shows how much the president-elect’s view on transgender rights has shifted in eight years.
A snippet from Trump’s first presidential run has resurfaced on social media, capturing his drastic shift on the matter, after South Carolina Rep Nancy Mace introduced a resolution to ban transgender women from using the women’s restroom in the Capitol building. The resolution comes after Delaware voters elected Sarah McBride to the House, making her the first transgender member of Congress.
The April 2016 clip shows Trump, then considered a long-shot presidential candidate, telling the “Today” show hosts that transgender Americans should be allowed to use any bathroom they want.
At the time, North Carolina lawmakers were considering a controversial “bathroom bill,” mandating people use the restrooms that correspond to the sex on their birth certificate.
Trump objected to the measure: “Leave it the way it is…There have been very few complaints the way it is. People go. They use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate.”
However, once president, his position did not reflect this interview’s sentiment. Two months into his first term, Trump ended Obama-era federal protections for transgender students that required public schools to allow them to use bathrooms matching their gender identities.
Two years later, his administration proposed a Department of Health and Human Services rule that would allow faith-based foster care and adoption agencies to continue to receive federal funding while permitting them to exclude LGBTQ+ parents.
Following this move, Human Rights Campaign president Alphonso David branded Trump “the worst president on LGBTQ issues ever.”
On the 2024 campaign trail, Trump has continued on his anti-trans tirade.
At an NRA speech in April, he vowed, if elected, to direct an FDA-formed panel “to investigate whether transgender hormone treatments and ideology increase the risk of extreme depression, aggression and even violence.”
Trump slammed Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz as being “very heavy into transgender.” Trump told “Fox & Friends” in August: “Anything transgender he thinks is great, and he’s not where the country is on anything.”
His “Agenda 47” promises to cut federal funding for schools pushing “radical gender ideology” onto students and federal programs . He has vowed to bar transgender athletes from playing on sports teams that correspond with their gender identity. He has also promised to use the federal government to “stop” gender-affirming healthcare for minors and labeled the care “child abuse” and “child sexual mutilation” — and baselessly claimed that children go to school and undergo “brutal” gender-affirming operations.
Trump’s repeated threats to transgender Americans prompted a massive influx of calls to an LGBTQ+ hotline from young people after he was elected. The Trevor Project, a nonprofit focused on suicide prevention among queer youth, reported a nearly 200 percent increase in conversations with election-related keywords such as “election” and “rights.”
It wasn’t just Trump pushing this rhetoric, though. Republican candidates spent more than $65 million on anti-transgender ads this election cycle, according to an analysis from the New York Times.
