Former President Donald Trump posted a video of a web ad attacking the Biden-Harris administration for allegedly seeking to create a “woke” military more concerned about LGBTQ representation than being “tough.”
Trump — who like other Republicans, has seized upon LGBTQ issues as one way to appeal to the party’s socially conservative base voters — has previously made the same attack at some of his campaign rallies.
The ad compares two conflicting “visions” of the military in Trump’s view. For Trump’s military vision, it includes clips from Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 war epic Full Metal Jacket. For Kamala Harris, meanwhile, it depicts a military that cherishes and respects the LGBTQ community, which the former president considers ruinous.
Ironically, Full Metal Jacket is an anti-war, anti-military movie, as the drill sergeant shown — R. Lee Ermey — abusing members of the platoon meets his fate when a recruit (Vincent D’Onofrio) he has pushed to the breaking point shoots him dead before committing suicide.
To show what the military would look like under “Comrade Kamala,” the ad utilizes a clip of Admiral Rachel Levine, the Assistant Secretary of Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, wishing LGBTQ military members a happy Pride Month and saying, “Let’s make it a summer of Pride.”
The ad also uses clips from what appear to be three separate TikTok videos from out naval officer Joshua Kelley, who performs in drag as “Harpy Daniels.”
Kelley, who has previously performed as Harpy during events organized by the Navy’s Morale, Welfare and Recreation Department, announced in 2022 they had been chosen as a “Digital Ambassador” by the Navy to help boost recruitment.
By deploying clips of a prominent transgender woman and a drag queen, Trump’s implied message is that a military under a Democratic administration fosters an atmosphere where people are “weak and gay.”
“WE WILL NOT HAVE A WOKE MILITARY!” Trump wrote in a caption on X featuring the video clip.
“Trump has twisted and profoundly distorted Kubrick’s powerful anti-war film into a perverse, homophobic, and manipulative tool of propaganda,” the film’s star Matthew Modine told Entertainment Weekly.
Republicans have frequently claimed that the military, including leaders at the Department of Defense, are overly concerned with diversity and sensitivity training. As a result, they claim, the military has degraded its readiness to go to war and become “soft,” with rank-and-file service members more concerned with political correctness and left-wing social activism than defending America from external threats.
Congressional Republicans have proposed amendments to Department of Defense funding bills seeking to make the Pentagon’s existing ban on drag performances on military bases more permanent.
Some Republicans, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, have even called on the military to reinstate the ban on LGBTQ service members, claiming that their mere presence in the ranks is resulting in recruiting problems for all branches of the service.
DeSantis’s claim is based on stereotypes of conservative-leaning Americans so blinded by anti-LGBTQ hatred and so inflexible that they are allegedly incapable of serving alongside any service member who does not ascribe to their same worldview or come from the same background.
DeSantis is not the only person to employ the trope — much of right-wing social media frequently seeks to portray “real” military members — and by extension, Trump, should be become commander-in-chief — as hypermasculine “alpha males” who are ready to protect Americans at a moment’s notice.
That same view has also extended beyond the military, with Republicans frequently asserting that any male who votes for Democrats isn’t a “real man.”
Jared Polis created a stir on social media after he praised Donald Trump's nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Polis, a two-term governor and former congressman whose name has been bandied about as a possible Democratic presidential nominee in 2028, appeared to back Kennedy's stated goals, saying in a post on X that he was "excited" by news of the appointment.
" helped us defeat vaccine mandates in Colorado in 2019 and will help make America healthy again by shaking up HHS and FDA," Polis, an out gay man, wrote. "I hope he leans into personal choice on vaccines rather than bans (which I think are terrible, just like mandates) but what I'm most optimistic about is taking on big pharma and the corporate ag oligopoly to improve our health."
Metro Weekly is no stranger to political endorsements. We've been reporting about them for years. Human Rights Campaign, Victory Fund, Stein Democrats, Log Cabin Republicans.... Plenty of entities make endorsements, and for years we've shared those endorsements with our readers.
Making an endorsement of our own, however, is an exception to the rule. But as an independent publication with no fears of losing government contracts if we don't bow to a powerful candidate, we're comfortable making one. As an advocacy publication speaking to and on behalf of the LGBTQ community, we're little motivated to claim a spurious notion of neutrality, particularly in this election cycle. Today, we are at a colossal crossroads in the American experiment. Metro Weekly wants to make its position at this juncture crystal clear.
Donald Trump has tapped Scott Bessent to serve as the next Treasury Secretary.
The 62-year-old gay billionaire served as an economic policy adviser to Trump during the most recent presidential campaign and is the founder of hedge fund Key Square Capital Management. Prior to that, he was the chief investment officer at Soros Fund Management, a hedge fund started by Democratic donor George Soros.
A Yale graduate, Bessent lives with his husband, John Freeman, in a restored Greek Revival mansion in Charleston, South Carolina. They have two sons, whom they conceived via surrogacy, according to USA Today. He is a member of the French Huguenot Church of Charleston, where his family were founding members in the 1680s.
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