Closing ads for Trump: Transgender Americans

Trump flipped the script on "weird."

Strange to think that the direction of American democracy rested on the reaction of Americans in battleground states to male-to-female gender transition.

Watch: 30 Seconds:

Here is the script.

Charlemagne Tha God: "Kamala supports taxpayer funded sex changes for prisoners."

Cutaway to Harris, speaking: "Surgery."

Interview host: "For prisoners?"

Kamala Harris, speaking: "Every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access."

Charlemagne Tha God: "Hell no, I don't want my taxpayer dollars going to that."

Black Guest on Charlemagne's show: "Kamala supports transgender sex changes in jail where I don't want it."

Voiceover: "Kamala even supports letting biological men compete against our girls in their sports. Kamala is for they, them. President Trump is for you."

The closing visuals in the ad were predominately people of color along with text asserting that Trump tax cuts benefitted middle- income, working-class people. 

There was a second ad stating that even the liberal media was "shocked" at Harris' position. The ad showed Harris twice saying, "Every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access."  YouTube

A third ad asserted that Harris prioritizes transgender surgery over protecting Americans. The voiceover says: 

Under liberal border czar Kamala Harris, illegal aliens are pouring into our country, including murderers, rapists, and even terrorists. Instead of paying for their crimes and receiving justice, Kamala will give criminal illegal aliens to taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries.

In the closing week of the campaign, Trump and his PAC allies ran these ads multiple times an hour in battleground states. They reached a national audience when they played on sports programming. The goal was to marginalize Harris by saying her primary concern was a tiny subset of the LGBTQ constituency. The ads marry the woke, immigration, and public safety issues.

Democratic-oriented commentary finished the campaign condemning Trump having said he would protect women, "whether they wanted it or not." The premise of the commentary was that this was disrespectful to women. It was patriarchal and overbearing. The commentary presumed women would hate it and link it to the abortion issue, with men taking control of women's bodies. No doubt some saw it that way.

But given the inundation of the transgender ads in battleground states, perhaps Trump's comment played differently with another, larger group of women. Trump might be seen as protecting women from Kamala Harris. She, not Trump, was the heavy-handed one exercising power over women's bodies. She would be the one who wouldn't "like it" if women were protected from inmates, border-crossing criminals, and oversized trans females. Trump is the no-nonsense candidate. Harris is the extreme one.

There are subtleties and nuances relating to the government's responsibility for the health and safety of people it incarcerates. Most would agree the government must supply insulin to a diabetic prisoner. It would set broken bones and do cancer surgery. It cannot lock people up and then kill them by medical neglect. But gender transition is new. A great many voters consider it some combination of weird, unnatural, and unnecessary. Maybe a majority of Americans have a live-and-let-live attitude toward gender transition, but paying for transition surgery for inmates goes too far.

Extreme cases make good wedge issues. The ten-year-old rape victim who was banned from getting an abortion in Ohio was a good wedge issue for Democrats. Transgender surgery was Trump's issue. Harris did what Dukakis did with the death penalty attack and Kerry did with the Swift Boat attacks. She didn't contradict the ads. The trans issue is complicated for Democrats. The ad message stuck.

The 2024 election is a profound fork in the road for America. Strange to think whether or not the U.S. president is subject to the rule of law, whether millions of people will be deported, whether Ukraine survives, who gets lifetime appointments to the federal bench, and whether Trump's effort to overthrow the 2020 election is validated as a crime against our democracy or validated as acceptable, depended on how Americans at the margin in battleground states felt about male-to-female trans people. That was Trump's closing argument and strongest case.

Trump made Harris look extreme and weird.