A spokeswoman for the Trump transition team indicated nothing has been decided yet.
Citing “defense sources,” the Times (U.K.) claimed in a report Monday that President-elect Donald Trump plans to issue an executive order booting transvestites out of the military on day one. A spokeswoman for the Trump-Vance transition team told Blaze News that the unnamed sources in the report whose claims have now been repeated by activists and other publications don’t know what they’re talking about.
The Times’ sources alleged that Trump is not only planning to oust those transvestic service members presently enlisted with medical discharges, stating they are unfit to serve, but is planning on altogether banning transvestites from joining the military.
“These people will be forced out at a time when the military can’t recruit enough people,” said an unnamed source supposedly familiar with Trump’s plans. “Only the Marine Corps is hitting its numbers for recruitment, and some people who will be affected are in very senior positions.”
‘These unnamed sources are speculating.’
According to the Times, several sources said that Trump’s order will be “wider-ranging” than actions taken in his first term and that even troops in the military for decades could be removed from their posts.
Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to Blaze News, “These unnamed sources are speculating and have no idea what they are actually talking about.”
“No decisions on this issue have been made,” continued Leavitt. “No policy should ever be deemed official unless it comes directly from President Trump or his authorized spokespeople.”
While the unnamed sources in the Times report might be of the unreliable variety cited by the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, Trump has taken similar actions in the past and promised on the campaign trail to do as much upon taking office.
In July 2017, Trump announced that “the United States Government will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.” Trump added, “Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.”
Trump’s concerns were reinforced in a Feb. 22, 2018, Pentagon memo from then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis, which stated that in “the Department’s best military judgment, the Department of Defense concludes that there are substantial risks associated with allowing the accession and retention of individuals with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria and require or have already undertaken a course of treatment to change their gender.”
In 2019, the Trump Department of Defense established a policy permitting “transgender” troops to serve so long as they didn’t attempt to masquerade as members of the opposite sex or invade their spaces. Accordingly, the could claim to be “transgender” but would have to use the pronouns, uniforms, barracks, and restroom facilities corresponding with their sex.
After taking office, President Joe Biden reversed the Trump policy, stating, “America’s strength is found in its diversity.”
In the years since, medical transvestites in the military have been provided with sex-change and cosmetic surgeries at taxpayers’ expense, the opportunity to sit out deployments, and exemptions from uniform and fitness standards.
Feb. 1, 2023, documents obtained last year by independent journalist Jordan Schachtel of the Dossier, entitled “Care of Service Members Who Identify as Transgender,” revealed that the Pentagon funds transvestites’ so-called care, including “speech/voice therapy, cross-sex hormone therapy, laser hair removal, voice feminization surgery, facial contouring, body contouring, breast/chest surgery (colloquially referred to as ‘upper’ surgery), and genital reassignment/confirmation surgery (‘lower’ surgery).”
Blaze News previously reported that whereas mentally ill recruits, individuals found to be on medications, women with abnormal uterine bleeding, men with deformed genitals, those with chronic anxiety, those who have committed self-harm, and those who have met in the past with psychiatrists are routinely barred from joining the armed forces, similar prohibitions appear to have been relaxed under the current administration for those claiming to be “transgender.”
Trump pledged to a crowd in New Hampshire in August 2023 that he would “restore the Trump ban on transgenders in the military” and promised to “ban the Department of Veteran Affairs from wasting a single cent to fund transgender surgeries or sex-change procedures.”
Rachel Branaman, an LGBT activist who heads the Modern Military Association of America, told the Times, “Should a trans ban be implemented from day one of the Trump administration, it would undermine the readiness of the military and create an even greater recruitment and retention crisis, not to mention signaling vulnerability to America’s adversaries.”
“Abruptly discharging 15,000-plus service members, especially given that the military’s recruiting targets fell short by 41,000 recruits last year, adds administrative burdens to war fighting units, harms unit cohesion, and aggravates critical skill gaps,” continued Branaman. “There would be a significant financial cost, as well as a loss of experience and leadership that will take possibly 20 years and billions of dollars to replace.”
If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick to run the DOD, appears open to making quality, not diversity, the top priority at the Pentagon.
“I think we’re at a ‘s*** or get off the pot’ moment. We are at a tipping point for total institutional corruption, and Trump has a chance to reverse that,” Hegseth recently told the “Shawn Ryan Show.” “[The DOD] committed a Bud Light. In search of a non-traditional constituency, they offended their core constituency.”
Hegseth added, “The Army that I enlisted in, that I swore an oath in 2001 and was commissioned in 2003, looks a lot different than the Army of today because we’re focused on a lot of the wrong things.”
