I’m about to do something I really don’t want to do. Something I have known was coming no matter what I did, yet I still tried to ignore it and hope it would go away.
And yet, here we are. No matter how distasteful and abhorrent it is: Donald Trump is running for President. Again.
Of course, this is not a surprise. He never really stopped running after the 2020 election, insisting that he, in fact, had won, and inciting a deadly riot on the nation’s capitol building. Something that, oh, I don’t know, should be disqualifying for any political candidate, especially one running for president.
But the Trump cult is still strong in many parts of the country. The Republican Party is still under his sway, and we already know that there are no lows too low for Republicans to abandon Trump if they think he can be used to achieve their political aims. After all, it was Trump who packed the Supreme Court with ultra right conservatives who then overturned Roe v. Wade. Trump is a hero to the radical right. He can do no wrong in their eyes.
And sadly the country seems to have a very short memory. A recent Post-ABC poll found that the majority of Americans think that President Biden has accomplished “little or nothing” during his time in office. Dear Lord. I suppose that after the non-stop scandals and headline-making bullshit of the Trump Administration, Biden’s Administration feels a little too boring to some. Biden is a workhorse, not a show horse, as they say. Trump, meanwhile, is a horse’s ass.
Republicans have been taking their cues from Trump for a long time now and following his lead and playbook: lie, deny reality, promote conspiracy theories, be cruel, hurt the people you don’t like, and make the rich richer. So it isn’t a surprise that Trump has adopted the latest Republican obsession and campaign of cruelty against transgender people.
In a recent campaign video posted to Trump’s social networks, he unveiled what he called his “plan to stop the chemical, physical and emotional mutilation of our youth.”
“The left wing gender insanity being pushed in our children is an act of child abuse, very simple,” Trump begins.
He then launches into a screed about how “minor children” are being operated on willy-nilly all over the country, which is not the case. “Can you believe this?” he says at one point, which only serves to underscore that anyone listening to him should, in fact, not.
He also says that his department of education will require teachers to promote the nuclear family and “the roles of mothers and fathers and celebrating rather than erasing the things that make men and women different and unique.”
Make no mistake, Trump (or, rather, whoever wrote this for him), is echoing the right-wing claim that teachers are part of a left-wing plot to destroy heterosexuality and cisgender existence merely by acknowledging that not everyone is heterosexual or cisgender.
And listening to Trump talk about “celebrating” anything about women is especially galling coming from someone who has trafficked in sexism and misogyny his entire personal and professional life. Some of us haven’t forgotten the many credible accusations of sexual assault against Trump or when he was caught bragging about committing sexual assault on tape.
“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,” he says.
If Republicans regain control of the U.S. Senate (remember, they currently have a narrow majority in the U.S. House) and win the presidency (whether it’s Trump or any other Republican) this bill is as good as passed. And a right-wing packed Supreme Court will be more than happy to uphold it.
“No serious country 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,” Trump continues. “It was all when the radical left invented it just a few years ago.”
This is, of course, not true or historically accurate, but then again it is coming from the guy who believes he is still rightfully president and told us that Covid would just “go away” like “a miracle.” Here’s hoping he just goes away. That would be a miracle.