Former President Donald Trump rejected pronoun labels and expressed his lack of understanding of gender diversity in a bizarre segment with Fox News host Laura Ingraham.
Ingraham asked the former president — who is campaigning on rabid attacks on transgender healthcare protections and gender-affirming care — what his pronouns were, noting that Vice President Kamala Harris had “she/her” pronouns in her X, formerly Twitter, bio.
“I have no . . . I don’t want pronouns. I don’t want pronouns,” the former president said, before Ingraham attempted a joke, asking if Trump was ‘fluid.’
“Nobody even knows what that means. Ask her to describe exactly what that means. Nobody knows what that means,” Trump said, appearing flustered.
The comments weren’t the only time this week that the candidate seemed to fail to understand basic identities, with his comments on Kamala Harris’ Indian heritage making rounds on Wednesday, suggesting he doesn’t understand the concept of biracial people.
Later in the interview, Trump managed to bungle a softball question, passing on several opportunities to walk back his ominous claim that Americans “won’t have to vote anymore” after a second Trump term.
“After that [November] you don’t have to worry about voting anymore, I don’t care. The country will be fixed and we won’t even need your vote anymore,” Trump told Ingraham.
Pronouns are often used by individuals with all gender identities to express how to refer to themselves, though the linguistic feature has become a frequent target of conservative crusades.
Right-wingers had already lobbed attacks at Harris and others for sharing their pronouns, most recently circulating and mocking a 2022 event in which the vice president introduced herself with ‘she and her’ pronouns and described her outfit for vision-impaired attendees at a disability rights roundtable.
“Kamala Harris just introduced herself with she/her pronouns at an official event,” far-right Colorado congressperson Lauren Boebert wrote in a 2022 X post. “This is what happens when your speechwriter quits and you hang around with Geriatric Joe too long.”