Melania Trump to host Mar-a-Lago fundraiser for LGBTQ Republican group
Former President Donald Trump’s positions on LGBTQ rights have seesawed ever since his first campaign.
Melania Trump is set to host a fundraiser for the Log Cabin Republicans this month, an event that will serve to highlight the Trumps’ inconsistent positions on LGBTQ+ rights.
The April 20 event will be the former first lady’s first political event of the year, though it’s not a Trump campaign event, according to Politico, which first reported on her involvement in the fundraiser, scheduled to take place at the Trumps’ club, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida.
The news comes just over a week after former President Donald Trump’s campaign lambasted President Joe Biden for recognizing International Trans Day of Visibility on March 31.
“It is appalling and insulting that Joe Biden’s White House … formally proclaimed Easter Sunday as ‘Trans Day of Visibility,” Trump’s campaign said in a statement, according to CNN. Trans Day of Visibility is celebrated annually on March 31 and happened to fall on the same day as Easter this year.
The Log Cabin Republicans describes itself as a group of “LGBT Republicans and straight allies” who support conservative policy positions. Both of the Trumps have previously worked with the organization, and the former president spoke at a Log Cabin Republicans gala held at Mar-a-Lago in 2022.
Donald Trump’s positions on LGBTQ+ rights have seesawed ever since his first presidential campaign.
As a candidate in 2016, Trump called anti-trans bathroom policies discriminatory, Politico reported at the time.
“There have been very few complaints the way it is. People go. They use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate,” Trump said in April of that year, amid reporting on North Carolina’s new law prohibiting transgender individuals from using bathrooms that align with their gender identity, a law that was later repealed. “There has been so little trouble. And the problem with what happened in North Carolina is the strife and the economic — I mean, the economic punishment that they’re taking.”
Later in the campaign, Trump went so far as vowing to protect members of the LGBTQ+ community.
“As your president, I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful, foreign ideology,” Trump told supporters at the Republican National Convention in August 2016, connecting anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment with terrorism.
“And I have to say, as a Republican, it is so nice to hear you cheering for what I just said,” Trump added.
Trump’s third campaign appears to be sounding a different note — most of the time.
Last year, the former president vowed to do everything in his power to stop gender-affirming care for minors, outlining plans to punish doctors who provide such care and direct the Department of Justice to investigate companies that produce gender-affirming treatments.
“The left-wing gender insanity being pushed on our youth is an act of child abuse,” Trump said in a video he originally shared on his Truth Social media platform.
Nevertheless, Melania Trump still plans to raise money for a group that declares on its webpage, “Opposing LGBT equality is inconsistent with the GOP’s core principles of smaller government and personal freedom.”
