Trump leans into transphobic attacks on Harris and Walz

With less than 90 days remaining until the presidential election, former President Donald Trump is repeatedly disparaging transgender individuals in his attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris and her new running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

In one of many public displays of transphobia in recent weeks, Trump attacked Walz as being “heavy into transgender” during an Aug. 7 interview with “Fox and Friends.”

“There’s never been a ticket like this,” Trump said. “This is a ticket that would want this country to go communist immediately, if not sooner. … Anything transgender he thinks is great, and he’s not where the country is on anything.”

Just one day later, Trump voiced similar remarks during a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

“[Walz] is going for things that nobody has even heard of,” Trump said. “Heavy into the transgender world. Heavy into lots of different worlds.”

The transphobic remarks represent a continuation of Trump’s years-long crusade against transgender individuals and the broader LGBTQ community. The Trump administration spent four years targeting the community by actions such as banning transgender service members from the military, rolling back LGBTQ protections in healthcare and education, giving adoption agencies wavers to discriminate against LGBTQ people, and using agencies — including the Department of Housing and Urban Development — to impose transphobic restrictions on admission to shelters.

Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt went on Fox News to denounce Walz for supporting transgender youth and because his state required public schools to offer menstrual products to students from fourth grade through 12th grade. Trump advisor Stephen Miller labeled him “Tampon Tim.”

“As a woman, I think there is no greater threat to our health than leaders who support gender transition surgeries for young minors, who support putting tampons in men’s bathrooms in public schools,” Leavitt said on Fox News. “Those are radical policies that Tim Walz supports. He actually signed a bill to do that.”

A nationwide GLAAD poll conducted in January of this year — about six months before President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race — found that Biden had a 57-point lead over Trump among LGBTQ voters.

In a FOLX Health survey of more than 1,000 transgender and non-binary individuals conducted between July 17 and 28, 94% of respondents said they are “somewhat to very concerned” about a Trump presidency and 83% said they believe Trump does “not at all” address the needs or concerns of the LGBTQ community.

However, the Log Cabin Republicans — a group of LGBTQ Republicans — is continuing to stand by the former president in his third campaign for the White House. 

“Kamala Harris’ selection of Tim Walz means Harris plans to put the destructive Biden-Harris policies of the last four years on steroids,” Log Cabin president Charles Moran said in a written statement responding to Harris’ selection of Walz as her running mate. “From the economy and immigration to crime and public safety, Tim Walz is on the wrong side of the issues important to voters in the LGBT community.” 

The statement went on to accuse Walz of embracing “the radical left’s insane theories on sex and gender” and said he “signed a bill allowing the state to take young children away from their parents if they don’t let them undergo dangerous and life-altering surgeries.”

“He’s a cheerleader for Kamala Harris’ war on Title IX and destruction of women’s sports,” the group added. “He supports pushing sexualized gender-theory curriculum to kindergartners in classrooms. He even signed a bill putting tampons in boys school bathrooms. Make no mistake, despite what the media will say, there is nothing pro-LGBT or pro-family about any of this.”

That is a far cry from the kind of language coming from the Stonewall Democratic Club of New York City, which is a citywide LGBTQ political club.

“We are proud to support Kamala HQ’s choice of Tim Walz as her running mate!” the club wrote on Facebook after Walz was picked as Harris’ running mate. “Tim Walz has been a longtime supporter of LGBTQ+ rights, even sponsoring the first Gay-Straight Alliance at the high school where he taught geography and was the football coach in 1999! We look forward to continuing to support this dynamic ticket and hope you will join us!”