First Lady Melania Trump, never a stranger to cribbing notes from an Obama, wanted to light up the White House in rainbow colors this year to ring in LGBTQ+ Pride Month. The display would have echoed the iconic celebration at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in June 2015, after the Supreme Court legalized marriage equality in all 50 states.
But Melania never got the chance to commemorate Pride month by pinkwashing her husband’s awful, terrible record on LGBTQ+ rights. According to a new report, the Trump administration swiftly scuttled the proposal.
Two sources within the administration told the Washington Blade in a piece published Tuesday that White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows “played a role in blocking any sign of solidarity with the LGBTQ community,” as the LGBTQ+ newspaper wrote. While it’s reportedly unclear if he was directly responsible for the kibosh, the former Congressman allegedly directed the administration to ignore Pride month, which is also why President Donald Trump declined to tweet an acknowledgement of the community in June 2020, as he had done a year earlier.
The first (and last) time Trump did publicly acknowledge Pride month as President came in June 2019, but even those remarks left much to be desired. While the POTUS recognized the “the outstanding contributions LGBT people have made to our great Nation,” he also tweeted a racist dog-whistle, pointing the finger at nations which punish same-sex behavior. (His White House has vowed to fight to decriminalize homosexuality abroad, but the initiative has failed to produce any “major breakthroughs” in the year and a half since it was announced, as reported by Metro Weekly.)
“[L]et us also stand in solidarity with the many LGBT people who live in dozens of countries worldwide that punish, imprison, or even execute individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation,” Trump wrote, while also ignoring the fact that his administration is personally responsible for 181 attacks on the LGBTQ+ community in four years.
Further underlining the hypocrisy of the situation is the fact that the White House spent most of Pride month this year attempting to roll back LGBTQ+ rights. After arguing at the Supreme Court that queer and transgender workers should not be covered under federal civil rights laws, the Trump administration rolled back nondiscrimination protections for trans patients under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act. The latter action coincided with the fourth anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting, a horrific act of violence against LGBTQ+ people which, at the time, led to Trump pledging to be a “real friend” to the community.
