Pelosi Attacks Trump for Transgender Ban in Disturbing Public Statement
It didn’t take long at all for Nancy Pelosi to respond to President Donald Trump’s reissue of his transgender troop ban Friday, and it was yet another disturbing dose of what we’ve come to expect from the human object lesson in diminishing returns that is the House minority leader.
In a public statement designed to shame the president by pronouncing him a bigot, Pelosi attacked the new ban on increasingly personal grounds, seeming to ignore the fact that it was enacted at the behest of a lengthy report commissioned by the Pentagon.
“This latest memorandum is the same cowardly, disgusting ban the President announced last summer. No one with the strength and bravery to serve in the U.S. military should be turned away because of who they are,” Pelosi said in a Friday statement, according to the Washington Examiner.
“The President’s hateful ban is purpose-built to humiliate our brave transgender members of the military who serve with honor and dignity,” it added.
“It will harm our nation’s readiness and hollow out our strength, for we only strengthen our military by honoring our values of freedom and equality.”
Pelosi’s statement came after a White House memo Friday evening announced they would accept the measures suggested by Defense Secretary Mattis in a report that was submitted to the White House in February but only made public Friday.
“Among other things, the policies set forth by the Secretary of Defense state that transgender persons with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria — individuals who the policies state may require substantial medical treatment, including medications and surgery — are disqualified from military service except under certain limited circumstances,” the statement read.
The ban will go into effect when and if it survives court challenges that have plagued Trump’s first version of the ban, which was announced via Twitter last summer.
Pelosi’s statement is the usual pile of clap-trap we’ve grown to expect from her and the Democrats. It appeals to emotion without actually providing any evidence.
Pelosi’s statement hits all of the liberal pinball bumpers we’ve come to expect from her statements since Trump has taken office: “hateful,” “cowardly,” “humiliate,” “equality.”
Nowhere in Pelosi’s statement does she begin to address anything mentioned in the 48-page report about readiness, accession and retention standards and unit cohesion in regards to gender dysphoria and mental health.
Instead, she merely answers that all by saying that this ban “will harm our nation’s readiness and hollow out our strength, for we only strengthen our military by honoring our values of freedom and equality.” That sounds nice, but it actually means nothing.
What’s ironic is that this ban has been in place for most of our nation’s history — until 2016. That’s when President Obama overturned it. Seven and a half years into his presidency, during a campaign year where Democrats were trying to shore up their base and Obama was trying to cement his legacy. Boy, that’s a convincing stand for trans rights.
Apparently, Obama wasn’t “cowardly,” “disgusting” or “hateful” for not removing the ban earlier. And while he may have harmed our nation’s readiness and hollowed out our strength, it wasn’t because he didn’t “strengthen our military by honoring our values of freedom and equality” by letting transgender individuals serve.
When Pelosi decides to substantively address the concerns brought up in the Pentagon’s 48-page memo — and there’s no evidence she even read a bit of it before making this statement — she and the Democrat caucus she leads can be listened to. Until then, this fundamentally unserious word salad of meaningless terminology meant to provoke a visceral response from the base deserves to be treated as the bunkum that it is.
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