According to President Trump, everyone was transgender during the Biden Administration, or as he put it, “We had transgender for everyone.” Really? As ridiculous as it sounds, that statement probably contains more truth than his insistence that the 2020 election was “rigged” or his claims that our entire election system is a crooked, vulnerable mess. But that doesn’t stop the president from saying it or his MAGA faithful from lapping it up, just like they gorge themselves on all his other dangerous nonsense. As far as they’re concerned, everything that occurred during the Biden years was part of a “woke” assault by “liberal elites” and the “radical left,” and any election that doesn’t go their way is inherently illegitimate.
When it comes to our elections, Trump’s conspiracy theories are so confused, illogical and just plain silly that it’s hard to make sense of them. His prime-time speech (dubbed by critics as “I Have a Scheme” and “The Pettysburg Address”) included mentions of: non-citizen voting; foreign plots to manipulate our elections, whether by sabotaging the vote count or unscrupulously influencing American voters; “Deep state” or Democratic Party plots to tamper with voting machines and/or the counting of ballots; and, last but hardly least, his favorite boogey man when it comes to elections, voting by mail, which to his mind only exists to enable everything mentioned above.
There is, of course, nothing to support any of these paranoid, manufactured theories; despite his many claims, no new evidence has been uncovered. Trump is simply laying the groundwork for disrupting the 2026 midterm election, which he knows the Republicans are going to lose, leaving him vulnerable to criminal investigation and another impeachment by the Democrats. As I said before, the SAVE America Act, which is clearly designed to suppress the vote, should be called the “Save Trump’s Fat Ass Act.” Some of the president’s closest allies, including Steve Bannon, are already talking about sending ICE agents to polling places and even declaring martial law to disrupt the election process or tamper with the results. Indeed, everything Trump said is part of a “scheme.”
Trump’s refusal to concede defeat in the 2020 election (the “petty” part of his speech) lends itself perfectly to MAGA’s insistence that everything is a conspiracy and a plot. They truly view the liberal elites and the radical left as their enemy, out to get them and destroy their way of life. The vast majority know full-well that everyone wasn’t transgender during President Biden’s years in office, but that’s how they feel, as though some sort of mysterious, liberal-minded force is assaulting their world. As their fearless leader Donald Trump said, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
President Trump Claims He’s Defending America Against a Communist Takeover, the Oldest Rightwing Trope in the Book.
I realize the president was speaking figuratively when he said there was “transgender for everyone,” but this humble spirit fears it’s an updated version of the 1950s “Red Scare,” when the reactionary right targeted the male fear of castration by claiming the communists were coming for America’s “bodily fluids.” If you recall, Trump also said that during the Biden Administration children went off to school one gender and came home another, as though the Department of Education was secretly conducting sex-change operations. Trump understands that his MAGA base views transgenderism as the ultimate assault by their enemies.
Meanwhile, Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth has announced he will now require everyone in the American military over age 30 to have their testosterone levels tested, women included. Not only is this based on an outdated understanding of testosterone’s function in the human body, it fails to consider that many jobs in today’s military do not require the capabilities (e.g., brute strength) usually associated with the stereotypical macho superhero that Hegseth clearly emulates. Thank goodness that, for now at least, treatment will be voluntary.