Donald Trump announces 2024 presidential bid with unhinged transphobic speech
Donald Trump will run for president in 2024 (Getty Images)
Donald Trump – the most anti-LGBTQ+ President in modern history – has announced he will be making a new bid for the White House in 2024, and immediately attacked trans women in sport.
Trump announced at his resort in Mar-a-Lago, Florida on Tuesday (15 November) that he would be running for President at the next election. He becomes the first President in history to be impeached and run again.
“In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States,” CNN reported Trump as saying during his hour-long speech.
Trump took the opportunity to slam trans people in his speech, claiming he would not “let men… participate in women’s sports”.
He added: “My people tell me ‘sir, that’s politically incorrect to say’, I said, ‘that’s okay, I’ll say it anyway’… It’s very unfair to women.”
The twice-impeached former president, who still faces a number of federal charges from his first time in office, made his announcement to a room full of white people wearing caps. (Getty Images)
Speaking to a room full of Republican politicians and party members, he added: “This will not be my campaign, this will be our campaign all together.
“Under our leadership, we were a great and glorious nation – something you haven’t heard for quite a long period of time,” he said.
“Now we are a nation in decline. We are a failing nation. For millions of Americans, the past two years under Joe Biden have been a time of pain, hardship and despair.”
He then seemed to repeat his entirely debunked and incorrect claims that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him, claiming: “Anyone who truly seeks to take on this rigged and corrupt system will be faced with a storm of fire that only a few could understand.”
Trump also took the opportunity to slam trans people in his speech, claiming he would not “let men… participate in women’s sports”.
He added: “My people tell me ‘sir, that’s politically incorrect to say’, I said, ‘that’s okay, I’ll say it anyway’… It’s very unfair to women.”
We've come to the transphobia part of Trump's speech pic.twitter.com/BEN5prWeGu
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 16, 2022
Close to the beginning of his presidency, in 2017, Trump announced a ban on trans people serving openly in the US military, claiming it was burdened by the “tremendous medical costs” of trans personnel.
In one of Biden’s first actions as President, he reversed the ban, but not before trans people were made to feel like “caged animals”, unable to join the military simply because of their gender identity.
Nic Talbott, a trans man who wanted to join the military, but instead had to work at a Walmart, said of the ban: “I am capable, qualified and willing to do more, but there’s this barrier in front of me that makes absolutely no sense.”
The former President also, among other cruel attacks on LGBTQ+ people, appointed judges to the Supreme Court with anti-LGBTQ+ views, pushed a rule to allow federally-funded homeless shelters to reject transgender and gender non-conforming people based on “the shelter’s religious beliefs”, and erased LGBTQ+ language, data, and resource pages from government websites.
Trump has continued making jabs against the LGBTQ+ community since his presidency ended, going on several anti-trans rants, and seemingly supporting Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law by saying schools shouldn’t be “teaching transgender” to students.
At the end of his presidency, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) said: “HRC will continue to stand up against Trump.
“We will join other civil rights organizations and remain vigilant in holding Trump and his administration accountable at every turn.”
Trump has not yet announced a running mate for his 2024 bid.
