The Trump Train took one of its most despicable stops yet last week when House member Nancy Mace floated an anti-trans bathroom bill that lit a fire under the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and other methane-filled far-right Republicans.
The recent triumphant election win of Delaware’s Sarah McBride, making her the first trans member of Congress, became a focal point for the hateful arguments spewed by Mace and Greene, and was even supported by spineless Speaker Mike Johnson (who’s apparently forgotten how much Marjorie hates his guts, too).
Mace, MTG, and others’ argument for the bill saw them once again spout the — you know what, let’s just call it what it is — the wholly unsupported, flagrant transphobic lie that claims trans women are a danger to cis women if they occupy the same bathroom. In one damning response to the shameful hate being flung McBride’s way, comedian Dana Goldberg took to X to share her own experience sharing a bathroom with the congresswoman — and why she’s much better restroom company than Donald Trump. I mean, that would be true for countless reasons, but specifically because McBride can give you better makeup tips.
“I have shared the same bathroom with Sarah McBride on several occasions, and she never once made me uncomfortable,” Goldberg stated. “She did however help me fix my makeup. That congresswoman knows how to blend her foundation, which is more than I can say about Donald Trump.”
While Trump thoroughly deserves that burn, the ironic thing is that all those supporters of his who are trotting out the transphobic rhetoric in his name would be surprised to know what our felonious 47th president actually thinks about this issue. Back in 2016, in what now comes across as a startlingly measured response for someone we’ve watched deliver more and more extreme answers over the past eight years, Trump actually opposed a North Carolina bill that, like Mace’s, aimed to ban trans people from public bathrooms. Believe it or not, at the time, Donny declared he felt people should “use the bathroom they feel is appropriate.”
For anyone with a brain, Goldberg’s tweet isn’t just amusing but also common sense. As a 2018 study from the Williams Institute of the UCLA School of Law found, there is absolutely no link between trans-inclusive bathroom policies and any kind of decline in bathroom safety. “Opponents of public accommodations laws that include gender identity protections often claim that the laws leave women and children vulnerable to attack in public restrooms,” the study’s lead author Amira Hasenbush stated at the time. “But this study provides evidence that these incidents are rare and unrelated to the laws.”
And what is there to say to that but… Well, duh? Trans women, by and large, have no cause or desire to make cis women feel uncomfortable or unsafe, let alone harm them, just as the same is true of cis women. The truth is that it’s men like Predator-elect Donald Trump who really make women feel unsafe, and he’s the one these supposed bathroom defenders have rallied behind. Talk about flushing your morals away.