NEW YORK (AP) — A outstanding group that represents LGBT conservatives says a video shared by Ron DeSantis ′ presidential marketing campaign that slams rival Donald Trump for his previous assist of homosexual and transgender individuals “ventured into homophobic territory.”
The “DeSantis War Room” Twitter account shared the video on Friday – the final day of June’s LGBTQ+ Pride Month – that options footage of Trump on the Republican National Convention in 2016 saying he would “do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens.” Trump had been pledging safety from terrorist assaults weeks after the shootings on the Pulse Nightclub, a homosexual nightclub in Orlando, Florida, that was the deadliest mass capturing in U.S. historical past at the moment.
The video additionally highlights “LGBTQ for Trump” T-shirts offered by the previous president’s marketing campaign and his previous feedback saying he can be comfy with Caitlyn Jenner, the previous Olympic decathlete who got here out as a transgender lady in 2015, utilizing any toilet at Trump Tower and OK with transgender ladies competing at some point within the Miss Universe pageant, which Trump owned on the time of these remarks.
The video then all of the sudden veers in a distinct route, accompanied by darkish, thumping music and pictures of DeSantis, the Florida governor who’s trailing Trump by vast margins within the polls for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
It promotes headlines that DeSantis signed “the most extreme slate of anti-trans laws in modern history” and a “draconian anti-trans bathroom bill.” The pictures are spliced along with footage of muscular, shirtless males and a number of other Hollywood actors, together with Brad Pitt, seen carrying a leather-based masks from the film “Troy.”
“To wrap up ‘Pride Month,’ let’s hear from the politician who did more than any other Republican to celebrate it,” the DeSantis marketing campaign tweeted.
The video drew quick criticism from outstanding LGBTQ+ Republicans, together with the Log Cabin Republicans, which payments itself because the nation’s “largest Republican organization dedicated to representing LGBT conservatives.”
“Today’s message from the DeSantis campaign War Room is divisive and desperate. Republicans and other commonsense conservatives know Ron Desantis has alienated swing-state and younger voters,” the group mentioned in a tweet, including that DeSantis’ “extreme rhetoric goes has just ventured into homophobic territory.”
The group mentioned his “rhetoric will lose hard-fought gains in critical races across the nation. This old playbook has been tried in the past and has failed — repeatedly.” The submit mentioned DeSantis‘ “naive policy positions are dangerous and politically stupid.”
Jenner accused DeSantis‘ marketing campaign of utilizing “horribly divisive tactics!”
“DeSantis has hit a new low,” Jenner wrote on Twitter.
Representatives of the DeSantis marketing campaign didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark Saturday.
The video comes as Republicans have been wading into more and more hostile anti-LGBTQ+ territory, attacking Pride month celebrations, making an attempt to ban shows of rainbow Pride flags and passing laws to restrict drag reveals, together with broad assaults on transgender rights.
That rhetoric has seeped into the GOP presidential marketing campaign, taking a outstanding function that had been absent throughout latest previous aggressive primaries, together with in 2016, when Trump, a New York actuality TV star, typically introduced himself as a supporter of LGBT rights.
DeSantis leaned in on anti-LGBTQ+ laws as he ready to leap into the 2024 White House race. He signed laws banning classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identification in all grades, banned gender-affirming look after minors, focused drag reveals, restricted dialogue of private pronouns in faculties and compelled individuals to make use of bogs that align with the intercourse assigned at start. DeSantis additionally went after President Joe Biden for prominently displaying the Pride flag on the White House final month.
Trump himself pledged in a speech Friday that if elected, he would signal govt orders on his first day in workplace to chop federal cash for any college pushing “transgender insanity” and to instruct federal businesses “to cease the promotion of sex or gender transition at any age.” Hospitals and well being care suppliers providing gender-affirming look after minors needs to be deemed in violation of federal well being and security requirements and lose federal funding, he mentioned.
Both Trump and DeSantis have additionally railed towards transgender ladies collaborating in ladies’s sports and have referred to gender-affirming look after minors as “mutilation.”
At Trump’s rally in Pickens, South Carolina, on Saturday, the group booed when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., referenced to Pride month.
“The rainbow belongs to God,” she mentioned.
While such rhetoric appeals to the celebration’s conservative base, it dangers alienating the extra reasonable and swing voters who typically determine the outcomes of common elections.
The video, initially posted by the pro-DeSantis “@ProudElephantUS” account, was shared hours after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority dominated {that a} Christian graphic artist who desires to design wedding ceremony web sites can refuse to work with same-sex {couples}.
The choice marked a serious defeat for homosexual rights, with one of many courtroom’s liberal justices writing in a dissent that the choice’s impact can be to “mark gays and lesbians for second-class status.”
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