Donald Trump’s tried to imitate trans folks, and it’s shocking he didn’t blame the ‘fake news’ for making him do it
Unfortunately for everyone, the video is real.
President Donald Trump‘s speech to the GOP lawmakers at the Trump-Kennedy Center on Jan. 6 was nothing less than a bad open-mic routine. But he decided to take it a step further and do physical comedy too. Very cringe one, at that, aimed at trans athletes.
On Jan. 6, inside the newly renamed Trump–Kennedy Center in Washington, Trump turned the House GOP retreat into his stand-up comedy stage. Mid-speech, he launched into an impression of transgender athletes competing in a women’s weightlifting event. In the now-viral video, he is bending, tightening his arms, straining his face, and mimicking exaggerated exertion of weightlifting. To make it worse, he moaned like he just soiled his pants.
Without a single thoughtful dialogue, Trump turned a political issue into something closer to a middle-school skit. He didn’t even pretend to make a structured argument about sports policy. Instead, he chose mimicry and reduced a real group of people into a physical gag, built for applause.
Trump shamelessly turned trans athletes into an unfunny performance
But the room was forced to laugh, and they did. This could only mean two things. The room was either full of cowards or deranged people. Or, maybe both, since they were all Trump’s goons. When issues get complicated, Trump always reduces them to a visual shorthand. And his people applaud like their life depends on it. Just like when Immigration became a wall mime, and COVID became mask mockery.
Trump has now compressed transgender athletes into a physical caricature meant to land as humor. Online, people did not react with outrage so much as disbelief. A common question appeared again and again: is this real?. Because, of course, you don’t expect to see the president of the United States making those faces and moaning.
Everyone collectively wished the video were AI
Some users on X asked if the clip was AI-generated, hoping they could escape the embarrassment. And those who knew it was real said they wished it were AI. The response wasn’t shock at Trump’s performance, but secondhand embarrassment at the delivery. His theatrics aren’t provoking anger anymore. They’re provoking secondhand shame in Americans.
Trump has reduced the presidency to something so awkward that people want to believe it was artificially generated. But the most telling thing is he didn’t need to do this impression. He chose to. He chose to flatten a real debate into physical mockery. And he chose to do it knowing the clip would circulate far beyond the room. That’s why people wished it were AI.
It would be easier to dismiss the clip as edited or unreal than to accept that the president of the United States stood in front of lawmakers and decided this was the message worth sending. Sadly, it really happened, and we all have to live knowing it’s out there forever somewhere on the internet.
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