Things really aren't going very well for the Trump-Vance campaign, and JD Vance seems to think he knows exactly how to solve it—saying more weird stuff about trans people!
During Vance's recent appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast, Vance introduced what seems to be the newest right-wing conspiracy theory about transgender people: that they're faking it.
Vance told Rogan that middle-class young people are pretending to be trans in order to "reject white privilege" so they can get into Ivy League schools.
Vance's theory seems to go that since what he referred to as “gender craziness” is “most common among upper-middle to lower-middle-class white progressives," it only stands to reason that there's some kind of scheme behind it.
He told Rogan:
“You could believe this is a cultural trend that we should be questioning a lot more than we are right now."
“If you are a middle-class or upper-middle-class white parent, and the only thing that you care about is whether your child gets into Harvard or Yale, obviously that pathway has become a lot harder for a lot of upper-middle-class kids.”
Vance presumably means it is "a lot harder" because of things like affirmative action and one of the right's favorite buzzwords, "DEI," or diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
This is utterly false, though—Trump's own radical right-wing Supreme Court justices struck down affirmative action in college admissions last year, and many universities have been dropping DEI initiatives.
This has led to a marked reduction in minority admissions to Ivy League schools. So it's pretty hard to argue that it has "become a lot harder" for "upper-middle-class kids" to get into college. In fact, it's an absurd contention.
But Vance of course knows that his base A: likely doesn't even know any of this and B: wouldn't give a fraction of a you-know-what if they did. So: transgender conspiracy theory it is!
Vance called being transgender a "social signifier" which he claims helps these supposedly put-upon rich white kids compete for slots at elite schools. He told Rogan:
"The one way those people can participate in the DEI bureaucracy in this country is to be trans. If you become trans that is a way to reject your white privilege.”
Okay! That is the stupidest thing anyone has ever said, but go off, Senator!
On social media, many had big problems with Vance's newest attack on transgender people.
Vance of course wasn't content to just say something dumb. He went on to endorse the long-debunked theory that being transgender is a form of autogynephilia, or AGP, in which a man has a sexual fetish for cross-dressing or other expressions of female gender.
The theory has long been discredited and also would do nothing to explain transgender men even if were an accepted hypothesis.
Unsurprisingly, Vance's invocation of the ludicrous AGP theory didn't go over well online either.
The Trump-Vance campaign is showing signs of very real trouble in the latest polling, including the most trusted and reliable poll in the state of Iowa, a state Trump won twice by double digits, showing them now three points behind Kamala Harris.
As if that weren't bad enough, Vance's Sunday rally in Pennsylvania, where thousands were expected, was very sparsely attended, as were Trump's rallies in North Carolina.
Seems the weird, offensive theories about trans people aren't resonating with voters. Can't imagine why.
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