Trump repeatedly celebrated the inclusion of transgender women in his beauty pageant

Years before he said he was running for president to “defeat the cult of gender ideology,” Donald Trump welcomed and praised the inclusion of transgender women in the Miss Universe pageant.

In since unreported radio and television interviews from spring and summer 2012, Trump celebrated the interest in a 23-year-old transgender woman named Jenna Talackova participating in a Canadian pageant. He then later effusively praised the winner of the Miss USA pageant, Olivia Culpo, for saying that transgender women should be allowed to compete.

Trump, then the owner of the Miss Universe pageant, would go on to cite the possible participation of transgender women in Olympic sports to justify his decision to end a ban on transgender pageant participants.

But a decade later, as he geared up to run for a second White House term, Trump promised to “ban men from participating in women’s sports,” when speaking about transgender athletes – a reflection of how restricting trans rights has become a powerful talking point among conservatives and a potential a litmus test for Republican candidates.

Since launching his 2024 campaign Trump has also referred to gender-affirming surgery for minors as “child sexual mutilation,” said he’d seek to make such surgeries illegal if he returned to the White House, said he’d sign executive orders instructing federal agencies not to promote transitioning at any age, and ask Congress to pass a bill requiring the government to only recognize only genders assigned at birth.

That’s a departure from how he approached the inclusion of transgender people in society more than a decade ago.

For example, at the Miss USA pageant in June 2012, Culpo said she welcomed the participation of transgender women in the competition – a comment that Trump supported.

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