Trump’s Anti-Trans Ads Were Expensive and Unpopular. So Why Were They His Key Strategy?
Trump's campaign spent more than five times as much on anti-trans ads than on ads focused on the economy.
When Lil Miss Hot Mess conducted a drag story hour at a library in Los Angeles, she never expected to be the face of a multimillion-dollar Republican ad campaign. In a 2022 ad for Marco Rubio’s Senate reelection campaign, footage of Lil Miss Hot Mess reading to children is overlaid by Rubio’s voice: “The radical left will destroy children if we don’t stop them.”
“They indoctrinate children, try to turn boys into girls,” says Rubio, now Trump’s nominee for secretary of State.
“It's a really frustrating and disempowering feeling to have your image twisted in such a hateful and disingenuous way to sell someone else's agenda,” Lil Miss Hot Mess, who asked to use her stage name for safety reasons, told Uncloseted Media.
Whether Lil Miss Hot Mess likes it or not, she was one of the influential faces that spurred a movement of GOP ads that targeted the transgender community. Since that ad aired, Republicans have made attacking the trans community a key strategy, spending roughly $215 million in the 2024 election cycle, more than $29 million of which was spent on the presidential race alone.
The Trump campaign, which was the first to ever run an anti-trans attack ad in a presidential general election, spent more on anti-trans advertising than any other issue in the months leading up to the election. His campaign spent more than twice as much on anti-trans ads than on ads about immigration and more than five times as much than on ads focused on the economy, which was the most important issue to registered voters, according to a September poll from Gallup.
Out of the 22 issues Gallup asked voters about, trans issues ranked last, with 36% of them saying they were “not important.” And an October survey found that over 60% of Republicans and nearly half of Democrats think both parties should focus less on trans issues.
Why, then, did these ads likely resonate with many of the roughly 76.4 million Americans who voted Donald Trump in as the 47th president of the United States?
1. Abortion In Disguise
In 2022, when Roe v. Wade was overturned, Republicans wound up paying the price in the November midterms, where the Democrats took the Senate in what became known as “a red wave that wasn’t.”
“Republicans in this election cycle still hadn't found their footing on the messaging for abortion. So focusing on transgender issues allowed them to point to an area of the culture wars where they’re ahead,” says Don Haider-Markel, professor of political science at the University of Kansas.
“The advantage for the Trump campaign was you could mobilize social conservatives with this advertising because the same groups that don’t like trans people oppose abortion rights, and you can talk to them without saying abortion,” says Jami Taylor, professor of political science and public administration at the University of Toledo in Ohio, adding that this messaging likely activated conservative Christians to turn out.
While just 57% of Republicans say abortion should be illegal, more than eight in ten Republicans say gender is determined by sex at birth.
“It’s the same issue. ‘My body, my rights,’” Haider-Markel told Uncloseted Media. “It fits this broader message that ‘men can police gender and bodies, and that's the way it should be.’”
2. Targeting Young Men
Haider-Markel believes these ads were also an attempt to target younger men—a demographic Trump won—who are looking to solidify their identity. He thinks this is part of the reason Trump’s team bought ad space during football games, which are disproportionately viewed by men.
“As we've seen over the past several years since Covid, there is a bit of a crisis of masculinity amongst young men,” says Haider-Markel. “What it means to be a man in 2024 doesn't seem so coherent.”
“One way to assert themselves and gain control over their environment is by claiming a certain kind of masculinity,” he says.
“Beating down on trans folks and pushing back against the nature of more fluid gender identity is all part of that,” he says, adding that this beatdown helps men “lift themselves up.”
Haider-Markel believes these ads are part of a narrative that asserts a “traditional masculinity where the man is the primary breadwinner.” He points to Vice President-elect J.D. Vance suggesting women should reconsider going into the workplace and him questioning women’s worth if they are “childless cat ladies.”
3. Airing Ads About Trans Sports During Football
GOP ads targeting the transgender community aired more than 30,000 times, according to data from AdImpact, with a particular focus on NFL and college football broadcast audiences in swing states.
One ad, which included the slogan, “Kamala is for they/them, Trump is for you,” focused on trans women in sports, saying, “Kamala even supports letting biological men compete against our girls in their sports.”
Hogan Gidley, who served as White House deputy press secretary for the Trump administration from 2019 to 2020, thinks this messaging was “extremely smart.”
“You’re watching people who are six foot five, 275 pounds, running 440s, going ‘I don’t want my 110 pound daughter out there,’” Gidley told Uncloseted Media.
While there have been less than a handful of instances of trans people playing in major league sports, Gidley thinks these ads “hit on something people care about from an emotional and a practical standpoint.”
According to a 2022 Marist poll, 61% of Americans don’t think trans people should be able to play on a sports team that matches their gender identity.
“The reality is, on many trans issues, Republicans are much closer to the median voter than Democrats,” says Taylor, who is trans and believes that a second Trump term is “an 11” out of 10 when it comes to the threat to her community.
Gidley believes ads focusing on trans women in sports were a key reason 53% of white women voted for Trump and why he increased his support among women by 7% when compared to 2020.
He says many parents are concerned that their daughters will lose their chances of college sports scholarships because trans women will take their place. “When a man comes in and takes their spot and hurts their chances, that became a real problem, I think, for a lot of women,” says Gidley, who misgendered trans folks throughout the interview. “They may not have said that publicly, but they realize that was a bridge way too far and something they couldn't support.”
Despite this purported interest in protecting women, many facets of Trump’s campaign were sexist. Elon Musk’s super PAC published a video to X calling Harris the “C-word.” And Trump—who nominated conservative justices to the Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade and has at least 26 allegations of sexual misconduct and rape, including one instance where he was found liable in court—said he would protect women “whether [they] like it or not.”
Haider-Markel believes “the biggest losers in this election were young women,” trans and cis alike.
4. “Three For One”: Using Anti-Trans Ads to Focus On Multiple Issues
Andrew Flores, an associate professor of government at American University whose research focuses on how public policies affect LGBTQ people, says many of Trump’s anti-trans ads hit on multiple issues. One of the most popular ads highlighted Harris’ former support for taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for prison inmates in the United States.
“This isn't just a quote-unquote anti-trans ad. It's also about the public use of money and also about the carceral state and kind of what people think health care should look like for people who are convicted of crimes,” says Flores, noting that the ad was “also very racialized.”
“It’s not just the small percentage that make up the trans community in this country; it’s the cascading effect they have on so many other areas that make this problematic,” says Gidley, formerly of the Trump administration.
5. Republicans Pounced On Dem’s Lack Of Message
“The Harris campaign strategically did not talk about [trans issues],” says Flores. “I think that might have been a miscalculation.”
Flores, who is “skeptical” that these ads had a significant impact on the election results, says Democrats may have seen their stance on transgender issues as a weakness. “And that might have also been a part of the political calculus of the Trump campaign to emphasize that,” he says. “If you're going to run away from these topics … then [Republicans] get to control and dominate the narrative and frame you in a particular way. And if you just refuse to defend it, then you're allowing them to craft the argument.”
“They haven't had a clear answer on this issue since it's been in the public sphere since around 2015, other than just to say ‘being transphobic is bad,’” says Haider-Markel.
In an October interview with NBC, Harris said she would not put herself in the place of doctors who should make the decision “in terms of what is medically necessary” regarding trans healthcare. “I believe we should follow the law,” she said.
Since the election, there has been infighting amongst Democrats about whether their stance on transgender issues cost them. Rep. Tom Suozzi said “Democrats have to stop pandering to the far left,” and “I don’t think biological boys should be playing in girls’ sports,” and Rep. Seth Moulton set off a firestorm of criticism for similar comments.
Haider-Markel says this takeaway is “misguided,” and that the focus should be on “broadening the coalition and having a response to this anti-trans messaging.”
“If you provide people with even a paragraph describing what we mean by transgender, you end up with greater support and greater positive feelings towards transgender people,” he says, adding that Democrats were hurt more by a lack of messaging to working-class and middle-class voters on economic issues.
Post-election polling by research group GQR found that opposition on trans issues ranked very low among reasons people voted against Harris, with most citing the economy and immigration as top concerns.
6. Don’t Forget About Transphobia And Fear
Transphobia in the U.S. has been on the rise. Anti-trans hate crimes have spiked dramatically over the last five years, and over 660 anti-trans bills have been proposed in state legislatures this year alone, 45 of which have already passed into law. In 2023, 48% of trans women and 56% of trans men under 24 seriously considered suicide.
These ads aren’t helping. An October study by Ground Media found that people were less likely to be supportive of trans people or trans rights after being exposed to Trump’s anti-trans advertising.
Additionally, the legislative attacks these ads support have been shown to negatively impact trans people’s mental health.
Jami Taylor of the University of Toledo says she’s “never seen an onslaught like this directed at a particular community” regarding political ads targeting a marginalized group.
“I really wonder whether or not Democrats are going to move away from us,” says Taylor, adding that there needs to be greater efforts to improve public opinion on the trans community.
“I'm extremely privileged and I am probably going to be okay regardless of what happens,” says Taylor. “I lived most of my life already. So I can accept it. I'm not some 18-year-old who is worried about the future. My future is a bit less than 20 years, so I don't have to worry about this for the next 60 years of my life. I worry more about those people than myself.”
Additional reporting by Sam Donndelinger
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I am sure *this* message will strike A LOT of your audience as wrong and terrible and there will be pushback at the comparison and frankly, I no longer have fucks to give about it.
When you all keep writing these fucking pieces and I keep seeing the terms "biological males" and "biological men" and "biological boys"...to ME...and not a few other trans women I am sure, it comes across as if you were writing about race, and your text was filled with "nigger". Attributing it to racists and decrying all that lies behind it, while repeating the slur ad fucking nauseum. In this case, for us, some of you just uncritically using it your own fucking selves.
Julia Serano, a biologist, has written extensively on why it is inappropriate, inaccurate, and not scientific. So have others. She and others have made nice videos. Educate yourselves beyond fucking grade school.
It is straight out flatly a slur...and the harm it causes and initiates and spreads is real.
But you all keep saying it. You've been oppressing us with the ideas behind it for as long as patriarchy has been a thing...ie: since civilization. Yeah black folks...including yours.
This "biological sex" nigger is fucking sick of it.
There. There's a hot fucking take. Hop on the hate train. Have fucking at me. Have fun. The assholes are already aiming to kill me.
My apologies for my intemperate use of the word "fuck".