President Biden’s team issued statements on his behalf on three of these four occasions. (Sorry, Crayola.) Since then, right-wing media outlets, especially FOX News, have continued to take umbrage at the idea that Biden would recognize Trans Visibility Day on Trans Visibility Day, considering it also happens to be Easter. Masu.
Most of them are very overzealous and opportunistic. Some of that, including criticism of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), was rooted in misinformation. But the political appeal is easy to understand. Trans issues are a central element of right-wing rhetoric, as are appeals to religious conservatives. A plus B equals C.
Former President Donald Trump got in on the act during a rally on Tuesday.
“Oh my god [heck] What was Biden thinking when he declared Easter Sunday as Trans Visibility Day? ” President Trump said, suggesting that the declaration (also not initiated by Biden) showed “utter contempt for Christians.”
“November 5th will have a different name. It will be called ‘Christian Visibility Day,'” he added.
His supporters ate it up. But this too is overheated. President Trump’s appeal to Christians is more limited than he suggests, focusing on a very specific segment of the Christian population.
The Pew Research Center conducted post-election polls after the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections that confirmed that respondents had voted. This provides a more robust picture of the electorate than other indicators, including religious identity.
For example, we see that Trump won the majority of the Protestant vote in 2016 and 2020, and about half of the Catholic vote in each year. His Democratic opponents, Biden in 2020 and Hillary Clinton in 2016, won more votes from members of other religious traditions and from religiously unaffiliated voters. (Each graph below is scaled to reflect the percentage of total votes each group makes up.)
Combining these categories shows that Trump won about 55 percent of the Christian vote in each of the past two presidential elections. He only received about a quarter of the votes from everyone else.
In 2020, just over a third of voters, or about 37 percent, were Christians who voted for Trump. 29% were Christians who voted for Biden or a third-party candidate.
Assuming these numbers remain the same in 2024 (as they were in 2016 and 2020), it is hard to say that Election Day will be a day when Christians broadly express support for Trump’s policies and values. A significant number of Christians, including Black Protestants who supported Biden by an 82-point margin in 2020, have no enthusiasm for Christians whose views are made clear.
But of course, Trump isn’t talking about black Christians. According to PRRI, his endorsements in 2020 are: White For Christians in certain counties, and even more so for white evangelical Protestants.
His rhetoric, as it was in 2016, often focuses on elevating Christians in the national conversation. He means Christian conservatives who have faithfully voted for him in every presidential election to date.
Of course, this rhetoric is also rooted in the idea that Christians don’t have the strong, audible voice they already have. Trans Visibility Day exists because trans people don’t have that voice. This initiative was started by a trans woman to show other trans people that they are not isolated and alone, as many feel. After all, the trans community remains marginalized and ridiculed in many parts of the country.
Conservative Christians, on the other hand, do not.they may be feel That’s because a growing number of non-Christian voices are being heard more often, and because people like Trump and the Fox News hosts are trying to amplify feelings of condemnation. They seem to feel disadvantaged or threatened by the mere presence of the interests and values of non-Christians and non-conservatives. But as part of their response to that perceived threat, Christian conservatives still have enormous institutional and cultural power that transgender people do not have.
But this is Trump shit. You, we, are in a predicament. We Christians (a mantle that Trump adopted in earnest after entering national politics). we white people. Anger is the essence of MAGAism.
On Election Day, Mr. Trump will likely receive more Christian votes than Mr. Biden, just as he did four years ago. However, this does not mean that this day will become “Christian Visibility Day.” One reason for this is that he cannot reasonably claim widespread Christian support.
And in a practical sense, it is partly because every day in America is a day when Christian community is visible.
