The Lincoln Project is running ads to undermine Trump’s anti-trans stance

With less than two weeks to go until Americans go to the polls to elect the next president, a political group The Lincoln Project is running ads targeting Donald Trump‘s anti-trans stance ahead of the 2024 US presidential election.

Founded in 2019, The Lincoln Project is an American political action committee who vehemently oppose former president Trump and are actively trying to prevent his re-election.

The committee was founded by moderate conservatives and former Republican Party members who are united in their opposition to Trump.

The four central founders who announced the project were George Conway (former Trump aide Kellyanne Conway’s husband), Steve Schmidt, who was Republican John McCain’s presidential campaign manager in 2008, John Weaver, who oversaw McCain’s bid for the presidency in 2000, and media consultant Rick Wilson.

Wilson is the only original founder still at the project. Weaver resigned in 2021 after admitting sending sexually inappropriate messages to several men online.

The Lincoln Project has endorsed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris for the 2024 presidential election, and the committee’s latest ad directly addresses the Republicans’ fear-mongering, anti-trans messaging.

The ad highlights a Trump campaign video that wrongfully suggested it was vice-president Harris who enacted gender-affirming care for prison inmates and migrants.

A fact-checking report in The New York Times clarifies that the policy was enacted in 2019, when Trump was in the White House. Justice Department documents from 2018 show that the Bureau of Prisons acknowledged it had a “statutory mandate to provide basic medical and mental-health care”, and determined that that could include trans healthcare.

This is in direct contrast to Trump’s claim that it is only Harris who supports taxpayer-funded trans surgeries. Furthermore, Harris has said: “I will follow the law, and it’s a law that Donald Trump actually followed.”

“I think [Trump] spent $20 million (£15 million) on those ads, trying to create a sense of fear in the voters because he has no plan in this election that is about focusing on the needs of the American people –$20 million on that ad, on an issue that, as it relates to the biggest issues that affect the American people, it’s really quite remote. And again, his policy was no different.”

Oh pic.twitter.com/ZPL4shwebZ

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 16, 2024

The Lincoln Project’s video ad states: “He’s gaslighting America because Trump is for he/him. Kamala is for us.”

The messaging is an ironic nod to another Trump campaign ad, which claimed: “Crazy liberal Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.” The statement is paired with an image of Harris speaking to a drag queen. 

This is just one facet of Trump’s anti-trans campaign messaging that is being broadcast nationally. The former president and his fellow Republican congressional, gubernatorial and state-house candidates have invoked trans hate to attempt to narrow the Democratic campaign to transgender rights. The ads, which have been branded “trans panic”, include claims that the Democrats want to carry out “transgender operations on” people they term illegal aliens.

This comes after Trump threatened to ban all trans women from women’s sports if elected, as well as alleging, along with many of his supporters, that teachers were performing transition surgery on children during the school day.

Speaking about the need to call out the misinformation in Trump’s campaign ads, Wilson told The Advocate: “We did a quick scan of the polling on it and discovered it was really working on young, non-college white men, young Black men and young Hispanic men.

“But he’s once again lying to them and once again telling them a story that he knows is false. We want to expose Trump as the liar he is and how he’s willing to pit people against [one another].”

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