‘Everybody is transgender’ says Donald Trump in latest bizarre press conference

After signing several executive orders explicitly targeting trans people, and making transgender rights a key election issue, US president Donald Trump has now claimed that “everything is transgender”.

Addressing journalists on Wednesday (12 March), during a meeting with Micheál Martin, the taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland, Trump said: “Everything is transgender. Everybody transgender. That is all you hear about and that is why we won the election in record numbers.”

The existence of transgender people is “demeaning” to women, he added, before calling on Democrats to “get with” Republican lawmakers to “come up with good tax policy”.

Since Trump re-entered the White House, his administration has set out to make life less durable for trans people, proclaiming that the official policy of the US is that there are “only two sexes”, banning transgender people from serving in the military and restricting gender-affirming healthcare for trans youngsters under the age 19.

He has also moved to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programmes across the government and in the military.

@pinknews In a meeting with the Irish PM Micheál Martin to mark St Patrick’s Day on Wednesday 12 March, US President Donald Trump claimed that “everybody is transgender”. He also claimed that his stance on trans rights is why he “won the election with record numbers”. Since his inauguration, Trump has signed several anti-trans executive orders, including declaring that the US government will only recognise ‘two sexes: male and female’. #donaldtrump #transgender #transrights #trumpadministration #lgbtqia ♬ original sound – PinkNews 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Users on social media were quick to mock Trump’s latest comments.

“Less than one per cent of the population is now ‘everybody’… got it,” one person wrote, with a nod to the estimated number of trans people in the world.

Another said: “Republicans talk about transgender about 10 times as much as normal Americans.”

In one tongue-in-cheek remark, a X/Twitter user said they “blame the mice” – a reference to the bizarre comment made by Trump that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency had discovered millions of dollars being spent on “making mice transgender”.

CNN’s fact-checkers pointed out the federal grant was for “health studies that involve mice receiving treatments that can be used in gender-affirming health care” and “to figure out how these treatments might affect the health of humans who take them, not for the purpose of making mice transgender”.

The president called the fact-checking team “fake news losers”.

On the campaign trail before November’s presidential election, Trump pledged to reinstate his trans military ban, halt access to gender-affirming care and “cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content on our children”.

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