r/politics • u/HyacinthFT • 5h ago

No Paywall Donald Trump says transgender people will "end" if GOP keeps Congress in midterms

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/08/donald-says-transgender-people-will-end-if-gop-keeps-congress-in-midterms/
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u/Eris_AppleOfDiscord 5h ago

It was exit polled as the third most important issue of 24 elections. (immigration and inflation were the top two). And it ranked far above both the war in Ukraine, and Isrsel too.

It's absolute insanity.

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u/pilgermann 5h ago

The issue feels solvable to small minded people who can't accept that they don't have direct control over the actual problems in their life. They get to feel good about barring a single trans kid from a youth soccer team since that was in their control. Most people are really primitive when it comes down to it.

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u/HeyItsTravis 4h ago

This is exactly it. Bury your head in the sand on the big scary topics and focus on whatever will let you outlet your frustration while compartmentalizing your fears and anxiety to project onto them.

It’s like when a parent has a bad day at work then comes home and screams at their kids because they’re watching TV on the floor and not the couch.

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u/ProfSpaceTime 3h ago

A conservative will give you their last dollar if you tell them it will go towards lynching someone. They’re blood hungry demons

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u/LazyLeslieKnope 3h ago

It’s the new witch hunt.

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u/JEFFinSoCal California 1h ago

Great time to remind everyone that it wasn’t “witches” that were burned at the stake. It was women and girls.

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u/IFartOnCats4Fun Oregon 2h ago

Ironhide: “Why are we fighting to save the humans? They're a primitive and violent race.”

Optimus Prime: “Were we so different? They're a young species. They have much to learn.”

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u/the_gaymer_girl Canada 5h ago

And Harris mentioned trans people like one time and otherwise completely left them to get demonized by the GOP for months.

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u/pinkfartlek Michigan 5h ago

There's was a commercial the GOP ran that said "Kamala promised inmates sex changes" or something. I bet that left an impression on a lot of them no matter if it was true or not. All fearmongering bullshit

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u/SDRPGLVR California 59m ago

And that was only because she was promising that vital medical care will be provided to those who need it, which should go without saying, but we have inmates dying due to medical neglect on a constant basis. The fact that the right spun that as Kamala handing out "sex changes to inmates" and their electorate ate that up is such a blatant indictment on the intelligence of the populace at large.

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u/Eris_AppleOfDiscord 5h ago

The gop specifically said they wanted to force kamala to speak more about it. Since it was a winning issue for them.

She was caught in a catch 22

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u/shinkouhyou 3h ago

The only way out of these catch-22s is to reframe the issue instead of letting Republicans constantly control the narrative. Call out Republicans for their creepy fixation on trans women, talk about the issue from a medical privacy perspective and say that politicians shouldn't get between patients and their doctors, and treat the trans issue like the absurd manufactured distraction it is. Keep the tone light, avoid preachiness, and pivot back to economics. Produce media-friendly sound bites explaining how transition actually works (no, schools are not giving out sex hormones) and for fuck's sake, train every Democratic talking head so they don't stumble over themselves when talking about trans issues.

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u/Zeyode 40m ago

I thought this was obvious, but it feels like a lot of democratic politicians now forget that part of a politician's job is to be a rhetorician. They just take for granted that people will vote for them cause they have campaign money and they're not republicans.

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u/simpersly 4h ago

She should have. And call them out on it. Make fun of their fears and correlate their obsessed hate to the mass muders that happened throughout history.

Instead she spent 2 months trying to convince conservative housewives to vote for her.

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u/Eris_AppleOfDiscord 4h ago

The exit polling clearly shows otherwise. Trans issues are an Achilles heels for dems. Unfortunately.

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u/Bucksack 4h ago

So how does it get fixed?

What I’m reading in your comment is: “trans people exist, therefore dems will struggle to win.”

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u/Eris_AppleOfDiscord 4h ago

Personally. I would hope dems take a more libertarian angle and try to take the issue away from republicans. Make it more about personal liberty and autonomy rather than even trying to argue "Trans women are women"

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u/IAmPud 2h ago

You literally cannot defend trans rights if you are dropping “trans women are women”

That’s inherently central, dropping that has allowed the Labour Party in the UK to stomp on trans rights

You can’t accept bigotry to defend against it

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u/Bucksack 3h ago

That angle couldn’t hurt.

Part of my fear is that any Dem messaging strategy that relies on their audience thinking critically and not about themselves may be asking too much.

And Dems also need to be consistent lest they hand ammunition to the opposition. If they appeal to personal freedom/libertarian ideals for trans issues, are they also going to apply the same appeal to gun ownership/gun control? Environmental protection? Universal healthcare?

Whatever route they choose, I doubt a tv or radio ad is going to change minds on the topic, we gotta talk to people.

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u/IAmPud 4h ago

Post one

I’m sick of being told it’s my fault for existing that my rights are being taken away, so post the polls that show trans people are the reason we lost

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u/simpersly 4h ago

Because Republicans overlords, and conservative media made it so. Harris's job was to make it not an issue

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u/Hefty_Remove7965 5h ago

And people still thought she was far left..

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u/LOLSteelBullet 4h ago

It's the dumbest shit Democrats fall for.

Democrats: exist

Right Wing Propagandists: THEY'RE FAR LEFT SOCIALIST

Democrats: freak out and make a point to appear centrist (at best)

Democrats base: infighting

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u/Hefty_Remove7965 4h ago

Right when Nancy pelosi and Obama were called Communist/socialist...

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u/LOLSteelBullet 1h ago

Ironically it was Joe Biden of all people that moved leftwards, however so slightly, on his platform in response

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u/Hefty_Remove7965 1h ago

Yeah he was the first president to stand in a union strike line iirc

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u/Zeyode 1h ago

Dance around us too, like we were some sort of embarrassing secret. And then a lot of Democrats in office blamed us, when they barely even defended us the whole campaign

We're just another issue to throw to the wolves to save themselves political embarrassment.

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u/wewereromans 3h ago edited 1h ago

Nobody gave a shit about trans people in the US before they lost the 2020 election.

The right needed a new convienant thing to rally hate about since they had nothing of substance to offer their constituents that might actually improve their lives.

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u/CravingNature 4h ago

The salt of the earth in the flyover states will be fearful of anything if you repeat it enough.

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u/wolferman 4h ago

A true boogeyman since most people don’t/can’t name a single trans person in their lives.

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u/and_so_forth 4h ago

It's propaganda. People feel how they are told to.

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u/subwayratlander 3h ago

Maybe these people want to feel like badass heroes and theres nothing they personally can do to fix the economy or influence how our taxes are spent or decide which wars we fight. but any old joe could see a trans person and be awful to them, and that gives them the rush of power they crave … just guessin

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u/Choice_Depth_5933 Washington 4h ago

I think the GOP has fundamentally misread this. When I looked at exit polling cross-tabs after 2024, intensity on the trans-rights questions was most intense on the left. That is to say, even where anti-trans views were more widely shared, it wasn’t a motivating factor for Republican GOTV.

Many democratic pundits (mostly men tbh) scapegoated trans women and immigrants after the election, and the GOP has run with their story.

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u/Yingletofthecorn 39m ago

I mean, yeah I’d rank the rights of trans people pretty damn high in my priorities. I put it alongside immigration policy in terms of priorities on the grounds of “I don’t want half my friends to wind up in a concentration camp.”