Donald Trump told someone in the crowd for a Wednesday night fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago, “You don’t look gay.”
The comments, during an event for Republican congressional candidate and former Trump administration Housing and Urban Development department official John Gibbs, came after someone shouted out, “Gays for Trump!”
The former president responded with, “You don’t look gay… We did great with the gay population.”
The crowd laughed at the president’s remarks.
The comments come the same week that Florida’s GOP governor Ron DeSantis signed the state’s controversial “Don’t Say Gay” bill into law, which blocks classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity.
The former president’s son has backed the legislation.
“There is no ‘don’t say gay’ bill but given all the crazy sexualization of our kids propaganda I’m seeing maybe we need a ‘Don’t Groom Our Kids’ bill,” Donald Trump Jr said on 15 March. “If the left needs to teach toddlers these things there can be few other rational explanations and parents need to push back now!”
Despite the former president’s claims, experts say Donald Trump was one of the worst White Houses in modern history for LGBTQ rights.
Mr Trump opposed the Equality Act, which would’ve amended the Civil Rights Act to make discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity illegal.
He also appointed scores of judges skeptical of LGTBQ rights, and banned transgender service in the military, as well as rolling back Obama-era Title IX guidelines requiring universities to take certain steps to investigate sexual violence on campus.
As with most Republican candidates, Mr Trump was only elected with a minority of LGBTQ support.
The Associated Press found that 73 per cent of LGBTQ voters voted for Joe Biden.
Mr Trump has made other crude comments about gay people in recent days, telling a podcast he likes to play “YMCA” by the Village People at his events and when he DJs at Mar-a-Lago because it’s the “gay national anthem.”
“‘YMCA’, the gay national anthem, did you ever hear that? They call it the gay national anthem?” he told the Full Tilt podcast. “‘YMCA’ gets people up, and it gets them moving. We have a lot of good selections, and people love it ‘em when I do it.”
The Village People have called Donald Trump a “bully” and asked him to stop using the song.
“I don’t endorse Trump, I’ve never endorsed Trump, nor has the Village People,” band co-founder Victor Willis told Pitchfork. When an anchor asked Willis what he thought about Trump’s dancing, Willis laughed and said, “Donald Trump does what Donald Trump does. I’ve never seen him actually put his hands up and make the YMCA. He’s changed it to M-A-G-A or something.”
