Former United States president Donald Trump spewed transphobic rhetoric at a Jan. 29 rally while promising to ban trans women from participating in sports.
In his nearly one-and-half-hour speech, Trump took aim at trans athletes like University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas while hinting at a potential 2024 presidential run. If re-elected, he said he would take action to ensure that women like Thomas are unable to compete in alignment with their gender identity, but he did not outline any specific proposals.
“We will ban men from participating in women’s sports,” he said to a cheering crowd in Conroe, Texas, in comments recorded by C-SPAN.
Trump went on to deliberately misgender Thomas, who broke multiple records in her first year of competing in the women’s division, making her the target of transphobic hate. Right-wing media have used Thomas’ achievements as fuel for their belief that it’s “unfair” for trans women to compete alongside other women, a widely debunked myth perpetuated by fear of trans bodies.
Amid the backlash toward Thomas, the NCAA updated its policy for trans athletes that some say lacks protections for LGBTQ2S+ athletes. The new policy uses a “sport-by-sport approach to transgender participation,” defaulting to policies set forth by the national governing body of each sport. But in Thomas’ case, the sport’s governing body, USA Swimming, doesn’t have a trans inclusion policy available online and hasn’t responded to requests for comment, according to NBC News.
Trump also mocked trans weightlifters like New Zealand’s Laurel Hubbard, who made history last year as the first out trans woman to compete at the Olympics. “One guy walks in with one hand, he’s going like this,” he said while miming lifting weights, “and he broke the record that held up for 20 years.”
The former U.S. president also used the rally to offer a platform to politicians who have fuelled anti-trans bigotry in Texas, including Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Governor Dan Patrick. In 2021, Texas introduced the most bills targeting trans youth in the nation—three times more than any other state, according to analysis by progressive news site The 19th. Only one of the more than 60 proposed bills passed: a trans sports ban personally championed by Abbott and Patrick.
Eight U.S. states passed laws in 2021 banning trans athletes from competing on the sports team congruent with their gender identity. More than seven states have already advanced similar legislation in 2022, with an anti-trans sports bill passing the South Dakota House of Representatives on Feb. 1.
LGBTQ2S+ rights were regularly under attack throughout Trump’s presidency. In just his first two years in office, the Trump administration rescinded protections for trans students, announced a formal ban on trans people serving in the military and rolled back Obama-era rules that allowed trans inmates to be housed in facilities that match their gender. He also opposed signing the Equality Act, which would expand federal civil rights to protect queer and trans people from discrimination.
President Joe Biden reversed many of those decisions after defeating Trump in the 2020 election. Shortly after taking office, he signed executive orders lifting the trans military ban and directing all federal agencies to implement the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision affirming employment protections for LGBTQ2S+ workers.
Throughout Trump’s speech, he criticized the media and continued to insist that widespread voter fraud caused him to lose the 2020 presidential race, which was decided by a 7-million vote margin. False claims about the election being rigged culminated in a deadly attack at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021; Trump has said he would pardon those involved in the attempted siege convicted of criminal charges.
“If I run and if I win, we will treat those people from Jan. 6 fairly,” he said. “And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly.”
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