Trump's Pride—Or Lack Thereof

When you start in a new job, sometimes it's a very good thing to establish your own norms and traditions. It's important to stick with the terms of reference for your job, but sometimes—especially when you're in a leadership position—it's really important to put yourself out there and establish your own presence in the body of those traditions.

Take President Trump, for instance. He probably understands this better than anyone. He went through his entire presidential campaign, mentioning at several opportunities how much the LGBTQ community thought of him and how, if we as the public didn't believe him, we should "ask the gays" what they really thought of the man who became the 45th president of the United States.

Now, in support of the LGBTQ community that according to Trump loves him, President Donald Trump broke with an eight-year tradition of acknowledging Pride Month by saying nothing at all. One shouldn't really be surprised that he didn't say anything. After all, he was busily acknowledging National Homeownership Month, Great Outdoors Month and National Ocean Month—it's only natural that a month that was established to acknowledge a civil rights movement that has been getting battered under the Trump administration would completely slip his mind.

Let's not forget, he's also been enacting legislation that removed rights for transgender kids in schools—rights that activists such as Gavin Grimm and Vanessa Ford continue to fight for—and even removed the LGBTQ section from the White House website. Yes, President Trump has clearly been completely supportive of the LGBTQ community, and while he's been preoccupied with accusations and implications that he's colluded with the Russians in order to assume the highest seat in the United States of America, it only makes sense that Pride Month—probably one of the most important periods in the LGBTQ calendar year—would not be on his radar.

"Ask the gays," indeed.

One need only look at Trump's behavior since taking office to realize that in spite of all his claims that no one supports the LGBTQ community more than he does, the opposite is really what's true. He continues to thumb his nose at the potential to help support LGBTQ rights by supporting his Defense Secretary James Mattis in his decision to delay the integration of transgender troops in the United States Armed Forces. Odds are probably decent that in spite of claims to the contrary, this delay won't be just six months, but indefinite in nature.

Trump's lack of acknowledgment about Pride Month can be seen as further evidence of the bigotry which he has promoted throughout his presidential campaign and his tenure in the White House to date. After all, why acknowledge Pride Month when it's clear his administration as a whole does not believe in equality in that regard? Why say hollow words of support for Pride Month when everything he has said and done has indicated he simply does not care for or support the LGBTQ community?

Even if President Trump had actually gone ahead and said something kind in support of Pride Month, it does not eliminate what his track record since entering office has done. In this case, Trump's lack of acknowledgement only serves to underline that which many people have known all along: that Trump has no care for the LGBTQ community, in spite of his claims to the contrary, and he knows that acknowledging Pride Month would only highlight the hypocrisy that he has stood for since taking office.

He has no intention of making America great again. He has every intention of ensuring minority groups feel smaller and of lining his own pockets as much as he can before someone—or a group of someones—can oust him. Part of making America great is, to paraphrase the Declaration of Independence, the idea that "all [humans] are created equal, that they are endowed...with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness..." and that "whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

President Trump should perhaps revisit this great document. It might serve as an important reminder as to where his responsibilities to the country might lay.