JULY 26, 2017
Photo: People.com
On June 14, 2016, during the height of the presidential campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump issued this famous tweet:
“Thank you to the LGBT community! I will fight for you while Hillary brings in more people that will threaten your freedoms and beliefs.”
Cut to Wednesday morning when now-President Trump sent these three equally stunning tweets:
“After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow…Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming…victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you.”
When I first rolled out of bed this morning and saw this news on my phone, my first thought — well not really my first since that was “Do I have enough Cheerios?” — but my second thought was that he was using the issue of transgender soldiers as a bright shiny object with which he hoped to distract “the liberal media” away from his health-care bill going down in flames in the Senate and his childish baiting of Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions to get him to resign.
And normally that would have worked. Despite Trump’s claims of being a champion for the LGBT community, he must have forgotten what the “T” actually stood for.
But a funny thing happened. As he may have expected, Trump got pushback all right, but it wasn’t from where he expected. It came from fellow Republicans, and not just moderates. I would expect John McCain to embrace any trans American who wants to serve his country have the right to do so. But condemnation for Trump’s position extended to right-wing champion Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and super-duper conservative wing-nut Sen. Jodi Ernst (R-IA).
If there is a silver lining to Trump’s terrible tweets, it seems apparent that even Republicans have evolved to the point of not falling for such obvious gay-baiting. In her first on-camera press briefing since inheriting the Trump press secretary job from Sean Spicer (who seems to have gotten out just in time), Sarah Huckabee Sanders was so bombarded with press questions about the details of the trans ban that she threatened to walk out if she got one more question about the trans community.
Sanders just kept falling back on the old excuses of “unit cohesion,” a tired old chestnut of an excuse that was used to try to keep African-Americans, women, gays and lesbians and now transgender soldiers out of the military (even though they have already been there for decades). She also alluded to “tremendous medical costs,” an allusion to the military paying for sex-reassignment surgeries, a provision that has part of and has held up the federal budget bill, which includes money for Trump to build The Wall, which he wants desperately. Those pesky transgender soldiers are keeping me from building my wall!
But how much are the “tremendous medical costs” really costing? On Wednesday, The Washington Post took a look at the current military budget and found these interesting comparisons:
FEDERAL MILITARY BUDGET PROVISIONS
Budget provisions for Viagra — $41,600,000
Budget provisions for Cialis — $22,800,000
Budget provisions for Transgender Medical Costs — $ 8,400,000
So we are spending over $64 million for military officers to have their flags flying at full staff, but one-eighth of that figure for medical costs for transgender soldiers. And Trump considers that excessive?
Total thanks to our Republican friends for standing by the LGBT community in this ridiculous proposal, but the best case for allowing transgender soldiers to serve can probably be made by the very trans military who have already done just that.
One of the most persuasive is Kristin Beck (pictured, above), an ex-member of Navy SEAL Team 6 that helped to track down the location and eventual removal of Osama Bin Laden. For her courage and service, Kristin (then Chris) was awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart, and she was not pleased about Trump’s morning tweet and wasted no time in sharing that with the world. When asked about Trump’s contention that a trans soldier such as herself would become a “distraction,” she reminded him that “Being transgender doesn’t affect anyone else.”
But then she took the gloves off.
“Let’s meet face to face, and you tell me I’m not worthy.”
That’s a meeting that I would pay to see.
Those few Trump surrogates out there trying to defend the ban tried to argue that Trump’s main concern was keeping American military units strong. I would argue that by firing thousands of American transgender patriots, all that Donald Trump has done is to make America weaker.
