Donald Trump vows to ban trans athletes nationwide if re-elected president

A defiant but still very much defeated Donald Trump vowed to ban trans athletes nationwide if elected to a new term as president.

Trump, the former firebrand Republican president, took to Conroe, Texas Saturday night (29 January) for his first Texan MAGA rally since 2019.

In a meandering speech that stretched more than an hour-long, Trump laid out a string of promises certain to roil his critics – LGBT+ people included – at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds.

“We will ban men from participating in women’s sports,” he told his toadying supporters dressed in “Trump 2024” t-shirts and hats. “So ridiculous.”

He also decried the rise of Lia Thomas, a trans University of Pennsylvania swimmer who, with each stroke, has seen a culture war around trans athletes swirl around her.

“Have you heard about the man who is on the swim team that I know well?” he said, misgendering Thomas and doing so as he mention how Thomas shattered two women’s records with a 38-second margin against her closest competitor.

Trump then took aim at trailblazing trans weightlifters such as Laurel Hubbard, who, like Thomas, saw their wish to compete in the sport they love turn them into walking targets for a snickering right-wing media.

“But the best is the weightlifting records – they’re going,” Trump said. “One guy walks in with one hand [and] he broke the record that held up for 20 years.”

“Take a look at the weightlifting record,” he told bystanders, “two ounces is unacceptable. They beat ’em by many, many, many, many, many, many pounds.”