As soon as Tim Walz was announced as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Republicans wasted no time going after the Minnesota governor’s pro-LGBTQ+ record, which includes making his state a safe haven for transgender youth seeking medical care. But perhaps fittingly, the most hilariously incompetent attack of them all has come from the man at the top of the GOP ticket.
Appearing on Fox & Friends Wednesday morning to comment on the Harris-Walz announcement, former president Donald Trump said, “There’s never been a ticket like this. This is a ticket that would want this country to go communist immediately, if not sooner. … He’s very heavy into transgender. Anything transgender he thinks is great, and he’s not where the country is on anything.”
Tim Walz is “very heavy into transgender”? To that, I can only say, same, bestie! I also think anything transgender is great. The basis for Trump’s borderline incomprehensible anti-LGBTQ+ attack is presumably Walz’s 2023 executive order making the state a refuge for youth in need of gender-affirming care — a sorely needed measure given the widespread passage of trans youth healthcare bans in Midwestern and Great Plains states.
But conservatives have also tried to whip up transphobic uproar around the fact that Walz as governor signed a bill last year requiring schools to provide free menstrual products “to all menstruating students in restrooms regularly used by students in grades 4 to 12,” with some of the worst people you know labeling him “Tampon Tim.” (If you haven’t seen anything controversial about making pads and tampons widely available at no cost, then congratulations on being beautifully unplugged from the horrors of the right-wing internet.)
But apparently, because the new Minnesota law means that the products will be stocked in boys’ bathrooms as well, it has become an anti-trans talking point. God forbid trans boys, nonbinary people, or even just cis guys who need to grab a tampon for a friend have ready access to period products!
In any event, these anti-LGBTQ+ attacks on Walz reveal that, at least so far, the Republican Party has had to go back to the well for some of their most extreme and niche right-wing talking points in the absence of anything more substantive. At this point, a jocular Midwestern dad who advised a gay-straight alliance while coaching the high school football team is basically their worst nightmare.
Trump is also dead wrong about the fact that Walz is “not where the country is on anything.” According to Pew Research Center polling, most Americans want to see trans people protected from discrimination, and only a Republican-driven minority want to see transition-related medical care banned for people under age 18. And with the rise in LGBTQ+ identification among Gen Z, those numbers are only going to go one direction. This country’s only going to get even more “into transgender” over time; might as well get on board now!
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