'Vicious garbage': Anti-trans ads are taking center stage in Trump campaign

With the United States' 2024 presidential election only eight days away, national and battleground state polls continue to show an incredibly close race.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, has a 1 percent lead over Republican Donald Trump in a national CBS News poll released on October 27, while late October national polls from Emerson College, the New York Times/Siena College and CNN find Harris and Trump tied.

One of the swing states that reporters will be watching closely on Election Night is Pennsylvania. Trump carried Pennsylvania in 2016 but lost it to now-President Joe Biden in 2020, and residents of the Keystone State are being bombarded with political ads in 2024.

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In an article published on October 28, Salon's Amanda Marcotte — who lives in Philadelphia — points to anti-transgender ads as an especially ugly part of Trump's campaigning in the Keystone State.

"While ads for Vice President Kamala Harris are largely soothing promises of middle-class tax cuts," Marcotte observes, "every Trump spot is maximum-volume bile. We're routinely threatened with rape and murder at the hands of roving gangs of dark-skinned immigrants. Or we're subjected to wildly distorted tapes of Harris laughing as if she's a horror movie villain about to torture us in a basement. But what makes me cringe the hardest are the anti-trans ads."

Marcotte adds, "Because all of the Trump ads are vicious garbage, I spent a lot of time pondering why the hatred against trans people stands out."

Although Harris is a "cis woman herself," Marcotte observes, a recurring theme of Trump's anti-trans ads is that "one can either be for trans people or cis people, but it is not possible to be for both."

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"The not-so-subtle implicit message is that the mere existence of trans people threatens cis people," Marcotte warns. "To be certain, this is the central message of the Trump campaign, regardless of topic: If any two people are different — whether due to gender, sexual orientation, skin color or background — they must be in a locked battle for dominance, and there can only be one winner."

Marcotte continues, "If women gain, men automatically lose. If people immigrate here, it can only be at the expense of those who live here. But rarely is it stated so nakedly as in the anti-trans ads."

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Amanda Marcotte's full article for Salon is available at this link.