Caitlyn Jenner appealed to Trump for help with her passport gender marker

Caitlyn Jenner’s early April interview with Fox News host Tomi Lahren continues to produce headlines, as quotes from the expansive conversation reinforce what some see as a hypocritical streak among President Donald Trump’s supporters.

In the newest portion of the interview to be circulated on social media, the Olympic gold medalist, who came out as transgender in 2015, told Lahren that she had appealed to Trump for help after the gender marker on her passport was changed from female to male.

“Recently, I had my passport, I had to get it renewed. I sent it back, comes back gender marker ‘M,’” Jenner told Lahren, explaining that she had previously gone through the process of getting the gender marker on all of her identification, including her birth certificate, changed to female. “So now, I’m in a position, Tomi, that… What do I do? This is a safety factor. I can’t travel internationally anymore. I can’t use my passport.”

Jenner said she attempted to appeal the change by using a standard form to flag it as a mistake, but her request was denied. (Last year, the Supreme Court affirmed the Trump administration’s right to block trans and nonbinary people from choosing the gender marker on their passports.) So her next move was to write a letter to the president, even though she apparently has his personal cellphone number, about the implications for her and other trans people.

“I was in Mar-a-Lago two months ago, wrote a letter, explaining all of this to him, how it’s affecting me and a lot of other people. And unfortunately, he wasn’t there that weekend,” Jenner said, explaining that Secret Service personnel then promised her the letter would get to Trump’s desk.

“I haven’t heard from him. He’s kind of busy right now,” she said jokingly, as if she was about to follow up with “if you didn’t know.” “My gender marker is not big on the issue, OK. So I get that, and I’m not blaming him whatsoever. I love the guy, and I love what he’s doing.”

Jenner, who has been an on-again-off-again supporter of Trump since 2016, refused to place any blame on the president personally while discussing the situation with Lahren. However, she did make some comments about the policy being ill-informed, which seemed to be directed at involved parties within the administration.

“I don’t know what’s gonna happen, because I don’t think this was really thought out, what this means,” she said, going on a tangent about how the policy is especially unrealistic when it comes to trans men, who she claimed have an easier time transitioning because testosterone is “a very strong drug.”

“It’s not gonna work,” she said. “And I don’t know what the solution is yet. And unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to talk to the president about it. But this is a big issue.”

Jenner — a record-breaking decathlete who reentered the limelight in the 2000s through Keeping Up with the Kardashians — also touched on the fact that her new passport could affect her eligibility to vote, in light of another recent Trump policy. Though she didn’t actually criticize the controversial SAVE America Act, Jenner instead said matter-of-factly that she now wouldn’t have the proper identification. And, as if to affirm her loyalty, she shifted to leveling blame on the left.

“We went so far to the left on this issue for the last 30 years,” Jenner said, referring to trans visibility. “Now, unfortunately, I don’t think I helped it at all. When I came out in 2015, I brought this issue forward, but I had nothing but good in my heart. I thought, ‘This is a very marginalized group of people’ — that I've been dealing with this issue since I was a little kid, and maybe I can make a difference. But unfortunately, the left kind of took my issue.”