EXCLUSIVE: Biden campaign previews messaging on Trump’s threat to LGBTQ rights
In an exclusive interview with the Washington Blade on Thursday, officials with the Biden-Harris reelection campaign explained their strategy for reminding voters of how the rights of LGBTQ Americans were under attack during former President Donald Trump’s first term in office, while also demonstrating how and why a second term would be far worse.
The officials said the LGBTQ-focused messaging in the months ahead will be informed to a large extent by Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s 881-page blueprint for Trump’s return to power that would reshape American government by advancing a Christian nationalist agenda. “We at the campaign are using Project 2025 as an umbrella term for anything and everything that is being proposed by Trump and folks who are aligned with Trump,” an official said.
With respect to Trump’s record, he said the campaign will point out instances in which the former president, for example, opposed legislation that would have advanced LGBTQ-inclusive nondiscrimination protections, appointed judges “who continually are taking away rights,” and targeted healthcare protections “at a governmental level for LGBTQ Americans.” A campaign memo obtained exclusively by the Blade notes that “As president, Donald Trump and his administration treated the LGBTQ+ community with contempt,” such as by: Opposing the legislation to guarantee nondiscrimination protections, while rolling back nondiscrimination employment protections for LGBTQ+ Americans, Appointing anti-LGBTQ+ judges who want to rip protections away from LGBTQ+ Americans, Erasing health care protections for LGBTQ+ Americans, Banning transgender troops from serving, and Attempting to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which would end protections for those with preexisting conditions.
In a second Trump term, the official said, those involved in drafting the Project 2025 document have detailed precisely how they would direct “government agencies to openly allow discrimination on the basis of
