The president of the United States claimed that Democrats want to turn everyone transgender “if they’re not feeling well,” while he ranted at a recent speech that was ostensibly about the economy.

“I think ‘transgender for all’ is a great, great thing for the Democrats to be talking about,” he said during a speech at the Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, casino yesterday. The speech was billed as a chance for Trump to “reclaim the economic narrative,” according to The Guardian.

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“Transgender for every member of your family. If they’re not feeling well that night, let’s just change their sex,” he said, getting the crowd to laugh. “Let’s not talk about it. Let ’em go and let ’em fight, fight, fight just to get these things.”

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While Trump claimed that Democrats won’t stop talking about transgender issues, that’s far from the truth. Trump made trans people’s rights the centerpiece of his 2024 campaign, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on anti-trans ads, while Kamala Harris’ campaign stayed fairly silent on trans rights.

Trump has repeatedly used the expression “transgender for all” – he generally presents it as something that he believes Democrats are demanding – over the past several years, even though it’s not clear what he means by it. This was perhaps one of the few times that he has offered more of an explanation as to what he means when he says that: He appears to believe that Democrats want everyone to transition, as if transitioning is something people do irrespective of their identity

In reality, liberals see trans people as a discrete, historically oppressed minority in need of the protection of the law. Expanding or restricting transgender people’s rights won’t change the number of transgender people; it will just change whether they feel safe in living their lives authentically, according to the liberal worldview. Trump’s argument appears to be that the fact that Democrats want to make transitioning easier for some people means that they want everyone to do it.

Also in his speech on Tuesday, Trump attacked Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who is a Black, Muslim woman, falsely accusing her of having married her brother, calling her a “b**ch,” and saying that she wears a “little turban.” The crowd then started chanting “Send her back!” even though she is a naturalized U.S. citizen.

Trump also admitted that he referred to Haiti and African nations as “s**thole countries” in 2018, which was a scandal at the time. At the time, he lied and said he never said it, but he is apparently now willing to admit he did.

“We had a meeting, and I said, ‘Why is it we only take people from s**thole countries, right?” he recounted on Tuesday. “‘Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden, just a few. Let us have a few. From Denmark… send us some nice people. Do you mind? But we always take people from Somalia, places that are a disaster, right? Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime. The only thing they’re good at is going after ships.”

“I already knew Donald Trump was a liar and corrupt and incompetent, but there were a lot of people who did go into this election with a real hope that Donald Trump was going to lower costs,” out Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D) said. “Now he says that affordability is a hoax. They thought that Donald Trump was going to get us out of foreign wars and entanglements. Now he’s looking at invading Venezuela.”

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