Image Credit: Chip Somodevilla / Staff / Getty 
(LifeSiteNews) – President Donald Trump boasted about his popularity with “the gay vote” during a recent call-in to Fox News, calling it something he was “very proud” to attain.
Trump spoke Thursday with Fox’s afternoon roundtable show The Five, during which co-host Jesse Watters asked about unconfirmed reports that latest Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei (who has not been seen publicly in weeks and may or may not still be alive) was rumored to be homosexual, which had previously been an obstacle to his succession prospects in the Islamist regime before U.S.-Israeli military strikes eliminated so many alternative rulers.
“Well, they (the CIA) did say that, but I don’t know if it was only them, I think a lot of people are saying that, which puts him at a bad start in that particular country,” Trump answered. “You know, I sort of have to smile to myself when I say, I see people trying to defend the Palestinian regime for women and ‘Women for Palestine.’ But they kill women if you don’t wear a certain group of — if you don’t wear a certain cloth all over your face, you have no chance of living. “When I look at ‘Gays for Palestine,’ but they kill gays — they kill them instantly. They throw them off buildings. And I’m saying, ‘Who are the gays for Palestine?’ They have a significant amount of gays for Palestine.”
The president then shifted gears to his own relationship with homosexuals and what it might mean for dealing with the younger Khamenei.
“Now, I think, you know, I did very well with the gay vote, OK? I even played the ‘gay national anthem’ (the Village People’s ‘YMCA’) as my walk-off,” he said. “And I think it probably helped me, but I did great — no Republican has ever gotten the gay vote like I did, and I’m very proud of it, I think it’s great. Perhaps it’s because I’m from New York City, I don’t know. But the ‘gay national anthem’ was my walk-off and I think it probably — but think, gays for Palestine, but they kill gays in Palestine. So when they hear that I think probably we can talk about them and it shouldn’t be too hard.”
LGBT media outlets were quick to dispute Trump’s claims of popularity, citing exit pollsfrom the 2024 election finding that just 13% of self-described “gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender” voters chose Trump over Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris. But while the Democrat nominee’s aggressive support for the full range of the current LGBT agenda won Harris the overwhelming majority of LGBT support (while alienating the swing vote), it is true that Trump is closer to “the gay vote” than the average conservative Republican.
As a liberal celebrity businessman in his life before politics, Trump has a mixed record on LGBT issues. In 2012, as the owner of the Miss Universe beauty pageant, he repeatedly endorsed the inclusion of “transgender women,” i.e. men, in competition with actual women, in the name of what the Trump organization called “modernized” rules at the time, eliciting praise from LGBT pressure group GLAAD.
While running for president in 2016, Trump criticized a North Carolina law banning male students from female restrooms and said anyone should be allowed to “use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate.” By the time he was in office, he flipped on the issue, rejecting Obama-era guidelines on the subject and announcing that the Department of Education would no longer indulge bathroom-related “discrimination” complaints.
A consistent supporter of same-sex “marriage,” Trump nominated a variety of pro-LGBT officials to government posts and judicial vacancies and continued an Obama-era executive order on “gender identity nondiscrimination” and U.S. support for international recognition of homosexual relations at the United Nations Human Rights Council. His campaign actively courted LGBT-identifying voters with rainbow merchandise. Over the years, he has also allowed his Mar-a-Lago residence to be used for same-sex “weddings” and Log Cabin Republican fundraisers.
On the other hand, Trump’s first term prioritized religious liberty and was generally aligned with social conservatives against the gender-fluidity movement, from banning gender-confused soldiers from the military to protecting women from having to share close quarters such as homeless shelters with men claiming to be transgendered. His White House also opposed the so-called “Equality Act” and maintained a biological definition of sex in its implementation of federal laws and regulations.
Since returning to office, Trump’s stances on homosexuality and marriage are unchanged, but he has been a consistent ally of social conservatives on gender issues. He has taken multiple executive actions to reverse the Biden administration’s transgender policies, including an order that ends all federal support for “transition” procedures on minors, rescinds or amends all of the Biden health bureaucracy’s past endorsements of underage “transitioning,” and calls for a review of the medical literature on the subject, enforcing all existing restrictions on underage “transitioning,” and taking regulatory action to “end” the practice to the greatest extent possible under current law.
Another order prohibits males who claim to be female from competing against actual women in sex-specific athletic programs at schools receiving government funding. A third disqualifies gender-confused individuals from military service and prohibits military health services from conducting “transition” treatments and procedures.
