The president-elect of the United States, Donald Trump, considered that “the issue of bathrooms” for trans people “has destroyed” the United States, after a campaign in which he strove to differentiate himself from the defense that Vice President Kamala Harris made of this collective.
“I don’t want to get into the issue of (trans) bathrooms. Because we are talking about a very small number of people and this has destroyed our country. So it will have to be resolved with what the law agrees,” Trump said in an interview with TIME magazine published today, after being chosen as Person of the Year 2024.
During the campaign, the Republican invested in television ads where he criticized that Harris supposedly financed gender affirmation surgeries with public taxes and that, in his opinion, these funds should go to the deportation of detained migrants.
“Kamala is with them. “President Trump is with you,” the ad said.
At TIME they unsuccessfully tried to delve into Trump’s position on which bathrooms members of the trans community in the United States should use.
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“In 2016, you said that transgender people could use the bathroom they wanted. Do you still think that way?” they asked him, while the future US president dodged the question by answering: “When was that?”
In a more conversational tone than usual, Trump indicated in the interview that he agreed with Sarah McBride (Democratic Party), the first trans person to reach Congress, that the political sphere should focus on other “more important” things.
Although he did not want to specify whether or not he will abolish Title IX – a federal law that guarantees students of both sexes the same rights – for transsexual students: “I am going to analyze it deeply,” he concluded.
In the United States there were around 300,000 transgender people between the ages of 13 and 17 in 2022 (1.76% of the total), according to research by the Williams Institute (University of California, UCLA).
South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace introduced a resolution in November that would change House rules to ban transgender women from using women’s bathrooms in the Capitol.
The controversy over trans rights was not only reduced to the use of bathrooms, but also to the possibility that trans people could participate in women’s sports teams, something that generated deep rejection in the Republican ranks and which became a frequent topic at Trump’s rallies as a candidate.
With information from EFE
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