While claiming Iran’s new leader is gay, Trump says ‘YMCA’ won him the gay vote. It didn’t

President Donald Trump paired an unverified claim about Iran’s new leader with a familiar boast about his political support, saying Thursday evening that his use of the song “YMCA” helped him do “very well with the gay vote.”

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Speaking on Fox News’s The Five, Trump said U.S. intelligence officials had told him Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is gay. “Well, they did say that, but I don’t know if it was only them,” Trump said. “I think a lot of people are saying that.”

There is no public evidence supporting that assertion, and U.S. intelligence agencies do not publicly confirm such claims. In Iran, homosexuality is criminalized and can be punishable by death.

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Trump quickly pivoted from the claim to broader commentary about LGBTQ+ people and Middle East politics, criticizing “gays for Palestine” and saying, “They kill gays… They throw them off buildings.”

He has deployed similar rhetoric in recent days. In an interview with Jake Paul, Trump defended the U.S. posture toward Iran by contrasting what he described as American support for LGBTQ+ people with Iran’s treatment of them, saying Iran “throws gays off buildings.” Advocates criticized those remarks as reducing LGBTQ+ people to a political talking point while sidestepping policy impacts affecting queer communities.

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Trump then turned to his own political performance. “I did very well with the gay vote,” he said. “I even played the gay national anthem as my walk off.” The president was referring to “YMCA,” the Village People disco anthem long associated with LGBTQ+ culture that became a defining feature of his rallies, often paired with his widely recognized, and frequently parodied, dance. Members of the Village People at times objected to Trump’s use of the song before later allowing it, and ultimately even performed during events tied to his second inauguration

But available data tells a different story. According to an exit poll conducted by NBC News, Vice President Kamala Harris won about 86 percent of LGBTQ+ voters in 2024, compared to roughly 12 percent for Trump—a wider margin than in 2020.

Trump has also repeatedly claimed he “won the gay vote,” despite those results showing overwhelming support for his opponent.

That disconnect is also reflected in Trump’s policy record. GLAAD’s Trump Accountability Tracker documents hundreds of actions, statements, and policies affecting LGBTQ+ people, including more than 300 that advocates characterize as harmful to the community. The tracker spans both of Trump’s presidencies and includes executive orders, agency actions, and rhetoric targeting LGBTQ+ rights.