Trump says Iran throws gays off buildings after trying to deport same-sex couple there

President Donald Trump used a YouTube interview with influencer and boxer Jake Paul to invoke a familiar anti-LGBTQ+ trope while defending the United States’ escalating military campaign against Iran, even as his administration has attempted to deport a gay Iranian couple back to the country.

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The nearly half-hour conversation, posted Friday, drifted between boxing, social media, war, immigration, and politics. But one moment in particular stood out.

While discussing the widening regional conflict involving Israel, U.S. forces, and Iran, Paul said he was surprised that some activists in the United States criticized Trump’s military actions while also expressing support for women’s rights. “I was a bit shocked that so many activists in America didn’t like it,” Paul said. “Meanwhile, they were like, ‘Oh, well, we support women. We want women to have all these rights.’ Meanwhile, you’re liberating the women of Iran.”

Trump responded by invoking LGBTQ+ people in Iran. “We support gays, but they throw gays off the buildings,” Trump said.

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The line has become a familiar refrain in conservative political rhetoric. It invokes the real and brutal persecution of LGBTQ+ people in countries such as Iran, where same-sex relationships are criminalized and can carry punishments including imprisonment, flogging, and death, as a way to defend hawkish foreign policy.

Trump was defending U.S. strikes against Iranian military and nuclear infrastructure in a campaign the administration calls Operation Epic Fury, which he has said was necessary to stop Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons. But LGBTQ+ advocates say the argument reduces queer people to a political talking point, used to criticize foreign adversaries while sidestepping debates about LGBTQ+ rights at home.

Trump’s rhetoric about protecting LGBTQ+ people from a regime that criminalizes their existence stands in stark contrast to the immigration policies of his own administration.

Earlier this year, immigration authorities sought to deport two gay Iranian men who are in a relationship back to Iran, where same-sex relationships are illegal and can be punishable by death under Iranian law. The couple fled Iran after being arrested by morality police for alleged “homosexual conduct,” according to their attorney. They eventually reached the United States seeking asylum, but remained detained for more than a year while facing removal proceedings that could have sent them back to Iran.

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Their lawyer, Bekah Wolf, told The Advocate that they are “textbook asylum cases,” noting that people fleeing countries where their identities can lead to torture or execution are precisely the individuals asylum law is meant to protect.

At one point during the interview, Trump boasted that U.S. military strikes had effectively dismantled Iran’s armed forces. “We wiped out their Navy, we wiped out their Air Force, we wiped out everything there is to wipe out,” Trump said. Independent reporting has confirmed damage to Iranian military assets during the conflict, but has not supported the president’s assertion that the country’s military capability has been entirely destroyed.

Trump also repeated his false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. “I got cheated,” he said, comparing the election to a rigged boxing match.

The president also claimed Washington, D.C., had become “the safest city in the country,” asserting that murders had fallen from several per week to zero. While homicides in the nation’s capital have declined significantly in the past year, publicly available police data shows the city still records killings and does not rank as the safest city in the United States. Trump also claimed, without evidence, that “11,888 murderers” entered the United States and that more than half had killed more than one person.

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Paul, who has tens of millions of followers across social media, praised Trump for appearing on podcasts and YouTube shows popular with younger audiences. Trump credited his youngest son, Barron, with encouraging him to pursue those appearances. “My son Barron… knew a lot of the podcasters or influencers,” Trump said, adding that they were “very important” to his success with younger voters.

At one point in the conversation, Trump summed up the worldview that ran through much of the interview.

“There’s no feeling like winning,” he told Paul.