This Is a Very Stupid Trump Ad

Trump's bizarre anti-trans ad is a sign of a desperate and foundering campaign.

The Trump campaign has made a very odd choice with less than a month left before the election: They’re doubling down on an issue that effects virtually no voters, that virtually no voters prioritize, and that most voters probably haven’t ever even thought about.

The issue: Transgender inmates getting gender-affirming surgeries in prison on the federal dime (and, secondarily, undocumented immigrants getting taxpayer-funded gender-affirming care). That’s the subject of the Trump campaign’s latest anti-Kamala-Harris ad, which accuses Harris of supporting surgeries for trans inmates and undocumented immigrants. It is, to use a word that’s been thrown around a lot this campaign, weird. And it’s hard to understand who, exactly, it’s aimed at convincing.

“Should taxpayer dollars fund gender transition surgeries for transgender inmates” is a question that, I would guess, most Americans would answer in the negative — in that sense, the Trump position is likely a more popular one than the Harris position. But salience matters too, and this is just not something that Americans care much about (I think we can also safely assume that the minuscule number of Americans whose number-one or even number-50 issue is ensuring that transgender inmates cannot get gender affirmation care are already voting for Trump). On the list of issues that matter to Americans in this election, I think you can safely put “sex change operations for transgender inmates and illegal aliens” well toward the bottom, somewhere between Texan independence and “figure out what’s actually going on at Area 51.”

It’s hard to overstate what a total nonissue this is. The first gender-affirming surgery for a trans inmate was only carried out in 2022, and since then, it’s remained a fight to get inmates this care. The vast majority of transgender inmates are not, in fact, being given free surgeries, even if they desperately want them.

That isn’t to say that this isn’t an important issue for the trans people who need gender-affirming care — it absolutely is. But while I cannot find any data on the number of trans inmates who need gender-affirming care, I think we can safely assume that it’s a tiny number, and that we’re talking about a relatively tiny amount of money. For trans people who need it, this care is everything. For the vast majority of Americans, though, the issue of transgender inmates getting this care does not really register — it’s certainly not top-ad-buy important. So why in the world is the Trump campaign running on it?