Of the 62 million ballots cast for Donald Trump in November, one of the most surprising names to appear in his column is Caitlyn Jenner, the 67-year-old former Olympic gold medalist whose gender transition, announced publicly two years ago, has made her the most famous trans person in the world. Since the election, Jenner has frequently been asked whether, if given the opportunity, she would again vote for Trump. So far, she has stuck to her guns, acknowledging that while she has been dismayed by some of the president's actions, she still believes that "we needed to shake the system up."
On Tuesday, Jenner delved into the subject in greater detail with Late Night host Seth Meyers, and even their brief conversation demonstrated that the logic on which Jenner bases her continued support for President Trump is...tenuous at best. Here's how she put it to Meyers:
Given the partisan affiliation of the president who spearheaded the most significant economic recovery since the Great Depression, I would argue that the premise of this statement is at least up for debate. But as a general expression of values, Jenner's statement is perfectly valid. Freedom and the Constitution are good and important things, and if she believes that Republicans are best equipped to protect those things, so be it.
But this is where her argument starts to come apart. From there, Jenner immediately launched into a robust criticism of the Trump administration's decision to rescind Obama-era guidance that held that barring trans students from using their preferred bathroom violates federal laws that prohibit sex discrimination.
Jenner went on to detail her concerns about other anti-LGBT members of the administration, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who reportedly bullied Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos into supporting Trump's rescission of the Title IX guidance, and Mark Green, Trump's nominee for Secretary of the Army, who has opined that trans people have a "disease." She told Meyers that if she could speak with Trump in private, she would say this:
Jenner's explanation for her faith in the GOP sounds sincere enough. But what she apparently fails to understand is that "the Constitution" and the "freedom" that form the basis of her support for President Trump are directly implicated by the administration's actions that she finds so disturbing. For example, the civil rights laws on which that Title IX guidance was based are rooted in the constitutional pronouncement that Americans are entitled to equal protection under the law. Jenner's answer to Meyers, which characterizes the late Title IX guidance as providing "equality" for trans people in public schools, even acknowledges as much.
Politics is complicated, and the insinuation that Jenner (or any member of the LGBT community) should automatically vote Democrat because of her status as such is reductive and condescending. That said, Jenner, by her own admission, cares deeply about LGBT rights—in another clip with Meyers, she asserts proudly and without hesitation that her advocacy for the trans community means far more to her than her Olympic career. If Jenner wants to give Donald Trump more time to prove himself before passing judgment on his presidency, that's fine! But part of championing her cause is understanding that "freedom" and "the Constitution" are not just abstract concepts worthy of vague praise. They are manifested in concrete issues that affect individuals' daily lives, and right now the administration is interpreting them to exclude the very subject that Jenner says matters to her the most.
