CBS News - the Trump Administration is playing 'divide and conquer' strategy against LGBTQ community

During his first term, Donald Trump pretended to like the LGBTQ community. During this, his second term, he's not bothering to play the game. Instead, according to CBS News, his Administration is pushing a divide and conquer strategy - specifically targeting the trans community, while the overall goal is a reduction of rights for the entire LGBTQ community.

According to CBS News:

From health care bans, to sports bans, bathroom bans, a military ban and attempts to erase non-binary gender pronouns from the federal system, Mr. Trump's most conspicuous threats to LGBTQ rights specifically target trans people, a pattern that has drawn accusations of scapegoating from his critics, given that trans people make up an estimated 1% or less of the U.S. population. LGBTQ advocates also see it as a tactic to sow division in the community. 

 "Donald Trump ran for president on an age-old platform of divide and conquer," said Brandon Wolf, the national press secretary at the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy organization. "Inside the LGBTQ+ community, Donald Trump ran his campaign saying, I'm not targeting all LGBTQ+ people, just the trans people, and if you sacrifice that community, perhaps you will be spared." 

While polling data showed most LGBTQ voters didn't choose to elect him, Mr. Trump has gained increasingly loud support from a faction of gay conservatives who disavow the "radical LGBT left" and insist his policies aren't at odds with their personal freedoms. 

 When the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration announced the upcoming termination of part of its 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline dedicated to helping LGBTQ youth, the gay conservative group Log Cabin Republicans called related media coverage "fake news." 

 

While some of the Trump Administration's actions exploit whatever divide exists between the trans and LGBQ communities, other actions have targeted the community in general.  The goal seems to be making the overall LGBTQ community weak and unable to fight back.

 . . .Mr. Trump and those in his orbit have repeatedly cast LGBTQ people and activities in a negative light. While announcing leadership shifts at the Kennedy Center in February, the president penned a social media post that pledged, in capital letters, to ensure the arts forum would no longer host drag shows "or other anti-American propaganda." His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, later said the country needs "less LGBTQ graduate majors" in an interview on Fox News criticizing Harvard University. 

 According to advocates and academics, the administration frequently relies on political strategies to marginalize trans people that have been used against other groups in the past. The term "groomers," for example, is a historically anti-gay trope, and "gender ideology" originally demonized feminism. 

 There were also notable moments of silence from the Trump administration, which did not acknowledge Pride Month, even as a global Pride festival took place for several weeks between May and June in Washington, D.C. LGBTQ people say that wasn't necessarily a surprise after watching their visibility decline in national forums this year, starting with mentions of "lesbian," "bisexual," "gay," "transgender," "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" being scrubbed from the White House website the day after Mr. Trump's inauguration, in a flashback to his first term.

You can read the entire CBS News article by clicking on this link.