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U.S. President Donald Trump appears during a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office of the White House on March 13, 2025 in Washington, DC.
He made the bizarre remarks in front of the Irish prime minister.
President Donald Trump, who has made the rollback of transgender rights a central pillar of his second administration, complained Wednesday that “everything is transgender,” even as his policies continue to strip trans people of dignity and basic protections.
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For a president who claims to be tired of hearing about transgender people, Trump has spent an extraordinary amount of time ensuring their lives are at the center of his political agenda. During a press conference with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin at the White House, Trump declared, “Everything is transgender. Everybody is transgender. That is all you hear about and that is why we won the election in record numbers.” He went on to say that transgender people “are hurting women very badly” before abruptly shifting the conversation to tax policy, urging Democrats to “get with” Republicans to pass new legislation.
Related: Donald Trump signs new executive order affecting transgender military members
Trump’s administration has relentlessly targeted transgender people since he returned to the White House. In one of his first executive orders, he erased federal recognition of trans identities, declaring that there are “only two sexes.” He reinstated a ban on transgender military service, cut off federal funding for gender-affirming healthcare, and directed agencies to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. These policies have left transgender Americans more vulnerable than ever, limiting access to healthcare, legal recognition, and protections against discrimination.
Related: Donald Trump’s government declares that transgender and nonbinary people don’t exist
On the same day, Trump aired his grievances, Republican lawmakers and conservative activists gathered in Washington, D.C., to celebrate “DeTrans Awareness Day,” a manufactured political stunt designed to undermine the legitimacy of gender-affirming care. The event, heavily promoted by far-right media, centered on the stories of people who have stopped receiving this kind of care and “detransitioned”—an exceedingly rare occurrence that has become a rallying cry for anti-trans legislators pushing bans on healthcare.
Trump has also revived his long-standing misinformation campaign about gender-affirming care, falsely claiming that government researchers are spending millions to “make mice transgender.” The claim stems from Trump’s misrepresenting of research involving transgenic mice, which are genetically modified to study human health conditions, during his joint address to Congress two weeks ago. Transgenic research, which involves altering an organism’s genetic material to understand biological processes better, is a widely used scientific method in medical studies and has nothing to do with making mice transgender. This baseless conspiracy theory, eagerly amplified by right-wing media and members of his administration, has been debunked by fact-checkers, who confirm the research in question was standard medical science examining hormone therapy’s effects.
Related: Trump signs executive order banning federal support of gender-affirming care for anyone under 19
As Trump was making his latest anti-trans comments, his administration’s legal team was simultaneously facing intense scrutiny in a Washington, D.C., courtroom. U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes, the first LGBTQ+ judge on the D.C. District Court, sharply criticized the Department of Justice’s defense of Trump’s military ban on transgender service members. During a heated five-hour hearing, Reyes dismantled the administration’s justifications, highlighting inconsistencies, cherry-picked data, and outright misrepresentations. The Trump DOJ attorney, Jason Manion, struggled to answer basic questions, at one point admitting he hadn’t even read the studies the administration used to justify its policy. Visibly frustrated, Reyes paused the proceedings and ordered the government lawyers to “get out the studies. We’re going to go over them.”
Throughout the hearing, Reyes challenged the administration’s assertion that transgender troops posed a risk to military readiness, pointing out that trans service members actually have lower rates of disability incidents compared to their cisgender counterparts. She dismissed the government’s claim that trans troops could simply apply for waivers, calling the process “practically impossible.” Her scathing rebuke highlighted what advocates have long argued: the administration’s obsession with transgender people is not based on facts but on a political agenda aimed at erasing them from public life.
