Former President Donald Trump told a supporter in the group Gays for Trump at an event at Mar-a-Lago: “You don’t look gay” — triggering an eruption of laughter among his fans.
“We did great with the gay population, as you know,” Trump boasted at the Wednesday fundraiser for Republican John Gibbs, who’s running for the House in Michigan.
In fact, 73% of the LGBTQ community supported Democrat Joe Biden and not Trump, according to a poll conduced by the nonpartisan National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. While in office, Trump was responsible for a litany of anti-gay and anti-transgender actions, and he decimating several anti-discrimination protections. He banned transgender people from the military.
As for Trump’s implication that gays have a single “look,” Gays for Trump founder Peter Boykin told Newsweek on Thursday that the former president was probably referring to gays on the left. Members of Boykin’s organization “probably wouldn’t look gay because it’s a stereotype that fits more with the typical ‘look’ of leftist LGBT,” Boykin insisted. He didn’t detail what that might be.
He added: “Not saying some of us might look fabulous and ‘gay.’ Otherwise it was a suit-and-tie event, so unless one of us was wearing a joker suit, meh,” Boykin wrote.
He described Gays for Trump as “various types” of gays who “lean right.”
Just last week, right-wing extremist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a featured speaker at Trump’s rally in Georgia, attacked Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and his husband, Chasten, in a homophobic rant.
“You know what?” a furious Greene asked the crowd. ”Pete Buttigieg can take his electric vehicles and his bicycle, and he and his husband can stay out of our girls’ bathrooms.”
Twitter critics had some thoughts about Trump’s comment. Some noted how ironic it was that Trump was discussing gays when his political ally, GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis, just signed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill into law, making it illegal to discuss sexual orientation or gender identity in schools from kindergarten through third grade.