Trans People Blamed for Trump Win

Hey, TransLash, Fam, this is The Mess, Imara’s Guide to our political hellscape. And that’s me. I’m Amara. I’m so glad that you’re here because we need to keep coming together, sadly, to process everything that’s going on in the world, both the tragedy and the absurdity, and to try to find a way to keep our spirits up and to keep a smile on our face through it all. And that’s what we look to do on this show. And we’ll have to keep doing that for a while.

For a while today on the mess, I’m going to dig into the Trump campaign’s $215 million anti-trans ad buy and what it all means for us moving forward, how some Democrats are blaming trans people for the Republican election, sorry, how some Democrats are blaming trans people for the defeat of Kamala Harris and the election of Donald Trump and the historic election of Sarah McBride as the first openly trans person to serve in Congress. Now, as always, we record this a couple of days before you hear it. So if things have shifted between now and the time it gets to your ears, if things have shifted between now and the time it gets to your ears, you’ll know why, and that’s very well a possibility. Okay, let’s get messy. Just a reminder to pick up every once in a while to do what peak up. So in the closing days of the election, Donald Trump essentially named two main reasons why he should be president. The first was immigrants and immigration, you know, to round up people, put them in camps and to deport them, and the second was the erasure of trans people. But it’s just now that we’re learning just how big the bet was on making trans people an issue in the election. Add impact. I’m sorry. Let me just pause. Yeah. So according to Media Watcher, ad impact, the Trump the Trump campaign, dropped $215 million in the last month on trans ads. Yes, you heard that right? Two $50 million that’s almost a quarter of a billion dollars worth of anti-trans ads. It was the single biggest buy of the entire election cycle for the Trump campaign. They spent more money advertising anti-trans ads and putting out anti-trans messages on anything else. Now hold on. Let me just pause right there. You on anything else. Now, one of the reasons why they ended up dropping so much money is because they did an experiment at the beginning of the month where they dropped $60 million worth of anti-trans ads at the beginning of October. We spoke about that here on the mess, and because there was no answer from Democrats, nor from the Harris campaign, to those ads, the Trump campaign likely saw it as a vulnerability, and put twice as much money as that initial investment without any response from the Democrats at all. And what’s so terrible about all of this is that that’s essentially political malpractice, because a basic rule of modern campaigns is that you do not let distortions of your candidate their record go unanswered. And the fact that there was an entire month in which there was a quarter of a billion dollars, or nearly a quarter of a billion dollars, worth of anti trans ads that were raging across the country, and there was no answer, is actually political malpractice, and it actually may have had a difference, I’m sorry, and it actually may have played a difference in tipping the balance in the election. Now you might ask, why? Well, the reason why is that, as we’ve said here before, those ads are not designed to move large groups of voters. If you’re baked in on a candidate, you’re baked in if you see an anti trans ad, you’re gonna roll your eyes and you’re gonna keep going. But if you are making up your mind at the last minute, and you haven’t really thought about the candidates and you’re trying to figure out where they are and whether or not they align with your values, ads like this work, they’re designed to peel off small numbers of voters, and the ads may have worked because young men flipped from Biden to Harris, and most young men made up their mind at the very last minute, and these ads were designed to reach them. They were everywhere, on every sports program that you can imagine, in so many different places where young men may have played up. So the bottom line is that when you’re running a modern campaign, follow modern campaign rules, which is that you don’t allow attack ads to go unanswered because they create vulnerabilities for your candidate that could be exploited. And one of the reasons why we may have ended up with a Trump presidency is not necessarily because I’m sorry. Hold on. Let me stop. Let me stop. Right there. You and one of the reasons why we may have ended up with a Trump candidacy is not because of any failure in trans people, and not because trans people are too woke. It may be because political professionals didn’t do their job, and that is a political consultants, mess, maybe a nightmare.

So it may have come as a record scratch in the last segment, when I mentioned that trans people were being blamed for the election outcome. Now it’s not surprising that that doesn’t make any sense, because it doesn’t, but that didn’t stop people from doing just that within hours after the election results were clear. I mean, they were still scanning ballots on Wednesday morning. But then came a sorry. But then came a number of Democratic politicians blaming trans people, blaming trans people like Congressman Seth Moulton, who is from Massachusetts, and Congressman Tom Souci, who is from New York, and the former, now former chair of the Democratic Party in Texas, gerberto Hold on. Giberto Hinojosa, who, after saying the sorry, who, after blaming trans people, faced an outcry and had to step down from that chair. But after all of those comments kind of were unleashed, it opened the doors, and the mainstream press piled on blaming trans people. On MSNBC, Morning Joe, there was an entire segment blaming trans people and how.

Trans people were forcing their wokeness on the entire world. I mean, we’re just 1% of the population. How does 1% of the population force any people to do anything? And also on CNN, same thing where an entire panel devolved into a shouting match when trans people were blamed by a CNN commentator on that network for the elections.

Now, as I mentioned in the last segment, it’s kind of impossible for trans people to be blamed for this election because trans people weren’t running the Democratic Party and weren’t and weren’t running the Democratic Party, and weren’t running the Harris campaign. And trans people didn’t make the decision to either make ourselves an issue like the GOP did, or to not say anything like the Democratic Party. And I don’t understand how there is a conversation around trans people forcing their wokeness when, if trans people were so powerful, then there would have been a trans person speaking at the DNC, but that didn’t happen either. So none of this adds up. All of it is just posturing. All of it is just blame shifting, because we don’t want to say the quiet part out loud, which is the people that are to blame, mostly for the election of Donald Trump, are white people. And when you press people on whether or not it was actually economics. The argument falls apart. So we don’t actually want to say who’s responsible, and certainly the consultants and the people in the campaign who made these decisions don’t want to take responsibility, so it’s easier to blame trans people. But all of this is really dangerous, because all these politicians and pundits and other people are doing is actually signaling to the Republican Party that they can trans I’m sorry, actually, just signaling to the Republican Party that they can target trans people on day one, like Donald Trump has said that he’ll do alongside immigrants, and by signaling that you’re not going to support trans people or stand up for trans people, that you’re going to blame trans people for all of the parties and the country’s problems, that that targeting is going to be allowed, and that’s going to put trans people at risk. And so the Democratic Party is not only doing that, but they’re betraying their core brand, which is essentially that it’s a party for everyone, and that it stands up for the rights of everyone.Along side immigrants, and by signaling that you’re not going to support trans people or stand up for trans people, that you’re going to blame trans people for all of the parties in the country’s problems, that that targeting is going to be allowed, and that’s going to put trans people, yeah, it was when I mentioned MSNBC and didn’t make the decision to either make ourselves an issue like the GOP did, or did not say anything like the Democratic Party. And I don’t understand how there is a conversation around trans people forcing their wokeness.

Now, as I mentioned in the last segment, the Harris campaign and trans people didn’t make the decision to either make ourselves an issue like the GOP. Did we understand how there is a conversation around trans people forcing their wokeness? When, if trans people were so powerful, then there would have been a trans person speaking at the DNC, but that didn’t happen either. So none of this adds up. All of it is just posturing. All of it is just blame shifting, because we don’t want for the election of Donald Trump our once the argument falls apart, so we don’t actually want to say who’s responsible, and certainly the consultants and the people in the campaign who made these decisions. But all of this is really dangerous, because I actually just signaling to the Republican Party that they can target trans people on day one, and by signaling that you’re not going to support trans people or stand up for trans people, that you’re going to blame trans people, trans people at risk.

On MSNBC, Morning Joe, there was an entire segment blaming trans people and how trans people were forcing their wokeness on the entire world. I mean, we’re just 1% of the population. How does 1% of the population force any people to do anything? And also on CNN, same thing where an entire panel devolved into a shouting match when trans people were blamed by a CNN commentator on that network for the elections.

Lastly, today, though, we get to end on some amazing, great, uplifting news, and that news is the election of Sarah McBride to the United States Congress, becoming the first trans person in history, openly trans person in history. No, let me just say that over. So we get to end today on some amazing and great, uplifting news, and that’s the election of Sarah McBride to the United States Congress, becoming the first trans person, known, trans person in history, to be elected to the House of Representatives. To the House of Representatives. Now you might already be familiar with Sarah. Sarah is a Delaware State Senator and was the first trans person in history as well. You see, there’s a lot of firsts that Sarah makes to address a major national party convention when she spoke to the Democratic National Convention in 2016.

All right, in 2016 and if you actually want to learn more about Sarah, then I urge you to go listen to a translash Podcast episode that we did a couple of weeks ago, with Sarah talking in depth about her race and her life and what she planned to do when elected to Congress. Now what’s so good about this is that it actually shows that even at the darkest moments, even at a time when it seems like possibility has faded, that there are new possibilities which emerge now, Sarah is such a gifted and powerful politician and person, politician and person, and is the right person to be caring for the flame in this moment. But Sarah is joined by a lot of trans people who were elected to political office across the country, even in a year when Donald Trump returns the power. And we’re not talking about in blue states only. We’re talking about places like Kentucky and local races in places like Kentucky, for example. So that’s just a good news moment at a time when there’s not a lot of good news for our community, at a time when there’s not a lot of good at a time when there’s not a lot of good news for our community, and hear Sarah in her own words talking about what her win means. That clip was from MSNBC. Now I know that I speak for all of us when we are doing a virtual pink, white and blue balloon drop on Sarah, especially on day one, when she is sworn in at the beginning of January, and are just so excited to see other possibilities for trans people, which emerge even during this time, and Sarah is moving forward in a historic mess.

All right, thank you for being a TransLash fam subscriber and sorting through all the mess today with me. If you liked the show, it would mean so much to me if you left a review on Apple podcast, I’ll be back in your feed in a couple of weeks to short, to sort through everything that’s going on that comes up between now and then. I also want to urge you to think about as we move into holiday season, to think about gifting your friends and family the mess. You know they need this analysis. You know, they need this catharsis, so just go ahead and pay the small fee, the very tiny fee to do that. I’m your host. Imara Jones, this show is produced by Aubrey Calloway, Sandra Adams is our senior sound engineer and contributing producer, and this episode was engineered by Lucy Little Oliver-Ash Kline oversees production as the director of podcasts at Translash Media. This show gets to your ears with the help of our social media team, including Courtney Cobb. And of course, this show is made possible by Translash Fam subscribers like you, thanks for listening, and we’ll see you soon.