Trump supporters will do anything to boost his odds in Pennsylvania, including targeting trans kids in a last-ditch effort to save his campaign.
With the president trailing by an average of 5.3 points in statewide polls and just a week to go until ballots are due, the right-wing American Principles Project (APP) plans to send out one million transphobic texts to voters over the next week. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the messages are intended to erode support for Joe Biden by misrepresenting his views on trans rights.
“Did you see Joe Biden endorsed sex change operations for children as young as 8?” read the robotexts, which links to a 30-second video. “That’s way too extreme and frankly, it’s really weird.”
The video depicts an exchange during Biden’s recent ABC town hall in which he was asked a question by Mieke Haeck, a Pennsylvania mother of two whose eight-year-old daughter is transgender. Haeck noted that the Trump administration has “attacked the rights of transgender people” during its three and a half years in office and asked what the Democratic nominee would do as president to address it.
“I will flat out change the law,” Biden responded, adding that “there should be zero discrimination” against transgender people.
According to the Inquirer, the video’s unseen narrator “falsely claims Biden endorsed” gender-affirming surgery for trans children in the brief clip, even though the candidate said no such thing at the time. The organization has been making similar claims on its Twitter account, alleging that Biden is in favor of “sex changes for kids,” which it incorrectly alleges are “dangerous” and result in “permanent damage to children.”
“We finally got him on camera saying this,” added APP Executive Director Terry Schilling in comments to the Inquirer. “It makes it more powerful than having a narrator have to say this all on camera.”
None of those assertions are true. In an LGBTQ+ platform housed on his 2020 campaign website, Biden makes no mention of affirming medical care for trans kids. He does discuss, however, reversing the Trump administration’s repeal of guidelines which allow transgender youth to use the correct restroom at school.
His plan for equality also includes pledges to tackle anti-LGBTQ+ bullying and high rates of homelessness among queer and trans youth.
But even though Biden has said nothing about gender-affirming care, Schilling believes that doesn’t matter. He said that the organization is merely “connecting the dots and making a claim.”
“That’s what happens in politics,” he told the Inquirer.
The organization plans to use over 100 volunteers to send out tens of thousands of texts an hour in the days leading up to November 3, and Schilling said the intention is to target Democratic and Independent voters. Early vote totals show that Biden leads with early voters in Pennsylvania, who lean heavily Democratic, by a 47-point margin, and Republican activists hope to chip away at those sizable margins.
The push is remarkably similar to a transphobic ad campaign in another critical 2020 swing state: Michigan, where APP is running commercials warning that Democrats will force cisgender girls out of school sports by allowing trans students to compete. The ads were flagged with a fact-check warning on Facebook for being misleading.
After the ads began airing, Schilling told Politico that he believes targeting trans kids is a winning strategy for the ailing GOP, calling it a “powerful issue that the Republican Party can use to its success.”
That remains to be seen. Despite the onslaught of attacks in recent weeks, Biden still leads by an average of eight points in Michigan.
Slandering Biden with false claims about his views on trans rights is just one tactic that Republicans are exploiting ahead of election day, however. Trump-aligned groups are also airing misleading ads alleging that Biden intends to “end tracking” after he called to transition America from reliance on fossil fuels at the most recent debate. Although the president claims the plan would cost Pennsylvania 940,000 jobs, the truth is that only 26,000 Pennsylvanians are employed by the oil and gas industries.
Conservatives also hope to shave off Democratic votes by blocking an extended deadline which allows Pennsylvania mail-in ballots to be counted as long as they are postmarked by Nov. 3. After a 4-4 split decision from the Supreme Court, the GOP hopes to bring the issue back to the bench now that conservative Amy Coney Barrett has been seated.
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