Trump mocks cisgender women as weak in bizarre anti-trans sports rant to factory workers

President Donald Trump mocked women weightlifters, both transgender and cisgender, during a meandering speech to manufacturing workers in Pennsylvania on Tuesday.

During remarks at a Mack Trucks facility in Macungie that resembled a campaign rally, Trump veered into an attack on transgender athletes’ participation in women’s sports. He called the issue “99-1” politically and claimed first lady Melania Trump had specifically begged him not to perform his routine about weightlifters.

In making his argument, Trump mocked cisgender women as physically weak before portraying transgender women as men who could effortlessly defeat them.

Without identifying any specific participants, he began by mocking a hypothetical Olympic hopeful trying to break a weightlifting record.

“This young lady, she's trying out for the Olympics, and she's going to do it. And the record stood for 19 years, and they put an eighth of an ounce on one side, an eighth of an ounce on the other… They put a little eight, like a feather, on one side, a little bit, just to break the record,” Trump said.

“Her parents are right there in the front, and they're so proud. The father's not so proud, because he knows she's not going to do it, because she's a woman. It’s a lot of weight. The mother, though, is screaming, ‘Darling, I love you, do it.’ And she gets over the weights, and she stares.”

Trump then holds his arm up, shaking, impersonating a woman who is trying and failing to lift weights.

“The mother's screaming, ‘Darling, I love you.’ And the father's looking, saying, ‘She has no chance,’ and she's like this. You see it,” Trump said, then made a sound of a woman crying. “She drops ‘em, and she's like devastated for the rest of her life.”

Then Trump described a hypothetical trans woman athlete.

“Then a guy comes along who transitioned,” Trump said. “That's the term I've gotten very good at that term. I used to take a lot of heat from my definition of the movement over. But he transitioned. He was a poor, very poor, bottom of the bottom of the line male weightlifter, but now he's a female weightlifter. And he looked at the amount, I think it was like 210 pounds or something like that, but that's a lot for a woman, but not that much for a man. You could do it with one hand. And he goes, looks down at the weight.”

Then he imitates a man easily lifting a bar as if it had no weight. I think he did a few things for emphasis, and he won. And everyone said, "Oh, isn’t that wonderful.’ Are we crazy? Men should not be able to participate in women's sports— that's a 99% issue. Do you ever hear the fake news? They said that's an 80%-20% issue. That's not.”

The scenario Trump described was fictitious. No transgender woman has won an Olympic medal. New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard became the first out transgender woman to compete in the Olympics in 2021, but she did not complete a successful lift or medal. Canadian soccer player Quinn, who is transgender and nonbinary, became the first out transgender athlete to win an Olympic medal when Canada won gold at the Tokyo Games. Caitlyn Jenner won a gold medal for the Olympic decathlon in 1976, decades before she transitioned. In 2021, New Zealand’s Laurel Hubbard became one of the first trans athletes to compete in the Olympics, but did not medal.

Beginning with the 2028 Los Angeles Games, transgender women will be barred from competing in women’s Olympic events under a policy announced by the International Olympic Committee in March. The restriction does not categorically bar transgender athletes from all Olympic competition.

Trump said the first lady had asked him not to perform the demeaning routine before the speech. “Please, the men's and women's sports,” Trump quoted Melania saying. “Please don't do the weightlifting thing.”