Rahm Emanuel’s Disgusting Trump-Like Play For Attention: Mocking The Marginalized

Targeting Trans People Isn’t Strategy— It’s Betrayal, It’s Inhuman

I don’t know if Rahm Emanuel ever played hide the salami with anyone when he was younger, but I do know that in the 1970s he was mercilessly bullied for being a ballet dancer at the Evanston School of Ballet— and then going to a women’s college recently turned coed, Sarah Lawrence. More recently, Emanuel has been traveling the country meeting with corporate donors to fill his SuperPAC with cash, first claiming to be a Senate candidate and more recently making the preposterous claim that he’s running for president. Instead he’s seeking to build an influence-heavy war-chest and to keep himself in the media— in case anything comes up.

He gets to go on TV and radio as though he were a real candidate and spew his reactionary bullshit. Yesterday he was on Megyn Kelly’s rightwing SiriusXM show, where the two of them put together this little skit:

Kelly: “Can a man become a woman?”

Emanuel: “Can a man become a woman? Not… no”

Kelly: Thank you… That was so easy. Why don’t more people in your party just say that?”

Emanuel: “Because we’re… I’m now going to go into a witness protection plan.”

Ha, ha. Isn’t he a hoot? A real riot! Targeting one of the most vulnerable populations in the country is what Republicans do, not generally Democrats. But in Emanuel’s reptile brain, he recalls how successful Trump was in terms of turning that kind of bullying into a potent political weapon to clobber Kamala with— “Kamala’s for they/them; President Trump is for you”— and he wants in on some of that action.

And Rahm isn’t the only corporate Democrat happy enough to throw transgender Americans under the bus to satisfy… whichever bigots they’re trying to appeal to. Gavin Newsom made the same kind of ugly move a few weeks ago, when he decided to re-do his image in a more conservative hue.

There's no political “nuance” in pandering to bigots. There’s no “centrist lane” that justifies dehumanizing an already-targeted minority. When Democrats like Rahm Emanuel or Gavin Newsom think they’re being clever by mimicking right-wing rhetoric on trans rights, they aren’t outsmarting Republicans as much as just proving that cowardice and opportunism aren’t confined to one party.

History doesn’t look kindly on collaborators. And in this moment, when anti-LGBTQ violence is rising, when hundreds of anti-trans laws are being passed in red state legislatures, when right-wing extremists are targeting queer kids and families, anyone who chooses mockery or mealy-mouthed evasion over a full-throated defense of human dignity deserves nothing but contempt. Of course, Emanuel has deserved nothing but contempt since the first moment he popped up in the public eye.

This isn’t hard: trans people are people. They deserve the same rights, the same safety, the same respect as anyone else. If you can’t say that without turning it into a punchline for Megyn Kelly’s hate circus, you don’t belong in public life. You belong in the trash heap of political has-beens who sacrificed their integrity in pursuit of donor cash and fleeting relevance. Call it what it is: a moral failure and a betrayal. Blue America won’t ever forget who stood with the bigots when it mattered