SALEM, Virginia – Former President Donald Trump Saturday brought a women’s college swim team on stage that objected to a biological male athlete joining their team, betting transgender politics will animate his most ardent base of supporters.
Trump made the Roanoke College women’s swim team the face of his promise to ban biological males from competing in girls’ sports through executive action. He invited seven members of the Roanoke College women’s swim team on stage, clad in pink shirts with a hotdog, saying men should be “out of women’s sports.”
“We will of course keep men out of women’s sports, I promise,” Trump said to the crowd in Virginia. “Last year, the radical left’s gender insanity arrived right here in Salem when a man was able to transfer onto the Roanoke College Women’s swim team.”
Trump later pledged to get critical race theory and “transgender insanity” out of schools.
The team has been outspoken, calling on the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) to stop allowing male intrusion into sex-specific sports after a recent incident in which a transgender woman wanted to join the team after competing as a man. While the trans swimmer ultimately withdrew the request to swim on the team, the women felt their civil rights had been violated and some are involved in suing the NCAA.
“The brave members of the swim team stood up to the transgender fanatics,” Trump said before bringing the women on stage.
Huge reaction here in Virginia to Trump saying, “let’s keep men out of women’s sports”: Trump says radicaleized gender see and insanity arrived “when a man was allowed to transfer onto the Roanoke College women swim team.”
— Samantha-Jo Roth (@SamanthaJoRoth) November 2, 2024
Lily Mullins, a team captain, was involved in the ongoing controversy that ensued. She praised Trump for “standing with women.”
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“Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have advocated for and pushed for this anti-woman, sex-based discrimination to continue all over this country, point blank, it is unfair,” Mullins said to applause from the crowd.
“I would like to thank President Trump for standing with women and promising to protect the rights of all of us. We are so lucky to have a leader like President Trump who has common sense, who knows what a strong woman is and will fight for generations of girls to come, thank you so much.”
In the closing days of the election, Republicans have made one of their largest investments in the culture wars yet, spending tens of millions to put Democrats on defense over transgender politics.
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Trump’s campaign and allied groups have flooded the airwaves with ads highlighting Vice President Kamala Harris’s past support for sex reassignment surgeries for prison inmates. The commercials running in swing states come as Trump rests his case for a second term and attempts to paint Harris as extreme.
“What the hell is going wrong with our country, can you imagine? And the men don’t realize [women are] tougher and smarter than us,” Trump exclaimed.
