Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis’s campaign shared a video on Friday attacking former President Trump’s previous positions regarding the LGBTQ community, as Pride Month comes to an end.
“To wrap up ‘Pride Month,’ let’s hear from the politician who did more than any other Republican to celebrate it,” the DeSantis War Room account tweeted, alongside a video compiled by another Twitter user.
The video features a clip from the 2016 Republican National Convention in which Trump vows to do “everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens.” It also highlights the former president’s opposition during the 2016 campaign to legislation barring transgender individuals from using bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity.
The video then turns to DeSantis, appearing to tout various headlines that described his transgender policies as “extreme,” “draconian,” “totalitarianism in disguise” and “unwarranted and un-American.”
The Florida governor signed into law several bills last month targeting transgender individuals. The legislation restricts gender-affirming care for transgender children, bars transgender individuals from using bathrooms that match their gender identity and blocks teachers and students from using their pronouns of choice at school.
However, despite Trump’s apparent support for the LGBTQ community during the 2016 campaign, his administration quickly took aim at the transgender community. Shortly after taking office, the former president rescinded Obama-era guidance for schools on transgender students.
He later tweeted that transgender people could no longer serve in the military, and his Justice Department said that it would no longer argue that transgender people are federally protected from employment discrimination.
In his 2024 campaign, Trump has used even more extreme rhetoric, vowing to “ban men from participating in women’s sports” and referring to gender-affirming surgery for transgender youth as “child sexual mutilation.”
This year’s Pride Month has drawn more outright opposition from conservatives, who have criticized and boycotted companies that have voiced support for the LGBTQ community.
This comes amid a wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation at the state level, where more than 500 such bills have been introduced and 70 have been enacted, according to the Human Rights Campaign.