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With less than two weeks until Election Day, Donald Trump’s campaign is dedicating time and resources toward attacking transgender people as part of its final pitch to voters.
The former president’s campaign, along with conservative groups, has poured $21 million into TV ads targeting Vice President Kamala Harris over her past stances on trans issues. In campaign rallies and media appearances, Trump has vowed to ban trans athletes from competing and falsely claimed that children are undergoing gender transition surgeries at school.
While debating Harris in September, Trump claimed that his opponent “wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison,” a remark that was widely mocked online. But it has since become a mainstay in his attacks as he tries to paint Harris as a radical on trans issues.
That Trump is trying to use fear as a means of motivating voters is not new. The intensifying of such attacks comes as the GOP presidential nominee is trying to court suburban women, voters with whom Republican strategists believe this anti-trans rhetoric resonates, The New York Times reported. But this tactic has not worked in past elections, Human Rights Campaign leader Kelley Robinson told the Times.
These attacks are essentially targeting a community that is estimated to make up less than 1% of the U.S. population and has been subjected to extreme discrimination in recent years. What’s more, a Gallup survey also found that Americans rank a whole host of issues as more important than trans rights, including the economy, the Supreme Court, immigration and health care.
Yet Trump’s attacks have put Harris in a defensive position. The vice president — who does not have a stellar record on trans rights — has declined to voice the kind of support for trans people that she had just months ago, when she was running at the bottom of the Democratic ticket. When asked by NBC News on Tuesday whether she believes in gender-affirming care for trans people, she declined to respond directly, saying instead that she thinks “we should follow the law,” while repeatedly pivoting to criticizing Trump.