Donald Trump: Transgender people cannot serve in any capacity in the military
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Not content to merely spend his mornings rage-tweeting about Jeff Sessions and Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump has just announced on Twitter that the United States military will no longer welcome transgender people. They will not be allowed to serve in “any capacity,” not in combat, not at support staff, not as translators, not as medics, not as doctors, not as nurses, not as mathematicians, not as engineers.
After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow……
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017
….Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017
….victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017
Tweets are not an executive order, although I’m sure an executive order will be issued. It was only in the past decade that the Department of Defense began to allow out-and-proud gay, lesbian and bisexual people to serve openly in the military. The issue of transgender people serving – openly or in the closet, as it were – has been a fluid situation over that same time period, with former SecDef Chuck Hagel loosening the rules and regulations about service of openly transgender people. Long story short, before today, transgender people could be recruited and serve openly in any capacity, although they were likely to run into a bureaucratic mess if they ever sought promotion.
As for Donald Trump’s tweets… yeah, he’s a contempible a–hole. I always thought that of all of his deplorable stances, he was probably going to be not-terrible on LGBT issues. I was wrong. To be fair, I knew he was wrong as soon as he made Mike Pence his running mate. This idea is ALL Pence.
Some reactions:
He's going to lean in to culture war the more threatened he feels and it will get far far uglier.
— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) July 26, 2017
Transgender Americans now in the military have already displayed more courage than their current commander in chief, who never served.
— Jonathan Capehart (@CapehartJ) July 26, 2017
I served on active duty in the U.S. Military. Exclusion of Transgender Americans by @POTUS is not based on facts, it is based on bigotry. https://t.co/DgURRGnMVu
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) July 26, 2017
2/ Note that RAND estimates around 4K transgender Americans already serve in military and reserves
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) July 26, 2017
so if trump ignores all of ivanka’s supposed interests and doesn’t listen to any of her advice, what exactly is she doing there
— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) July 26, 2017
thanks for all your support @IvankaTrump!!! https://t.co/KZnEEeFbkQ
— Matt Bellassai (@MattBellassai) July 26, 2017
So, he lied. pic.twitter.com/OBzRxFYS9g
— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) July 26, 2017
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Photos courtesy of Getty.
Source: Donald Trump: Transgender people cannot serve in any capacity in the military
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