The open secret that’s been obvious to everyone paying attention is that Trump simply does not give a shit about LGBTQ issues or abortion. Every time he talks about them you can just tell, he speaks in platitudes and never goes into more detail than he has to (compare this to, say, trade, which he cares about a lot). They barely showed up in his campaign book IIRC. I think that was part of the logic of picking Pence as his VP, it was a signal to the Christian right that he’d go along with their pet issues.
In retrospect, this probably actually helped him in 2016. The majority of the public was in favor of gay marriage by 2012-13, but mainstream Republicans still had to run against it in 2016 because the religious right still felt very strongly about the issue. Trump’s refusal to care put him closer to the true “median voter” on that issue than almost any other GOP candidate. It also probably helped build the (obviously false) idea in the public’s mind that Trump was relatively moderate
@sivavakkiyar Exactly right. That comment made it really clear that he’s joining the anti-trans brigade in 2024 purely because he knows some of his fans want to hear it
