- This past weekend,
Tiffany Trump , President Donald Trump's youngest daughter, spoke at a "Trump Pride" event. - In her speech, she claimed that her father has "always supported"
LGBTQ individuals. - Online, many people said the speech was hypocritical based on certain actions from the
Trump administration that have affected LGBTQ individuals. - Much of the criticism took the form of
memes and jokes.
Tiffany Trump, President Donald Trump's youngest daughter, spoke at a "Trump Pride" event last weekend, delivering a speech that Vanity Fair described as a "10-minute-long train wreck."
According to USA Today, the event was held in Tampa, Florida on Saturday and was co-hosted by current Republican National Committee advisor Richard Grennell. For Tiffany, this was a rare solo stop — Vanity Fair noted that she hasn't had much experience speaking on her father's campaign trail, but spoke at the RNC this past August.
In a video that surfaced on Tuesday and was uploaded on YouTube by the channel videos in my folder, Tiffany walks onstage at the event to the sound of "I Gotta Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas, a song that topped the Billboard charts in July 2009. "Let me just say how excited I am to be here in this room with probably so many of my friends, I bet I can see a few of you already in here," she said upon taking the mic.
Moments after, she fumbled a community acronym, saying that prior to
"You, unfortunately, see social media and you see these fabricated lies, it saddens me," Tiffany Trump said, per Vanity Fair. "I have friends of mine who reach out, they make up stories, they say, 'How could you support your father? We know you. We know your best friends are gay, we know your best friends are this, this, and this.' I say, 'It's because my father has always supported all of you.'"
Under the Trump Administration, there's been a 'whiplash' effect around LGBTQ protections that were enacted during the Obama Administration, NPR reported in March. Weeks after President Trump's inauguration, the administration rescinded an Obama-era guidance that required schools to protect transgender students from harassment, give them access to bathrooms and locker rooms of their choice, and accommodate a student's name and pronouns. Trump also tweeted an order to ban transgender people from serving in the military in July 2017.
People online were swift to descend on Tiffany Trump for a speech that felt out of step with the policy reality of her father's administration.
—Peter Morley (@morethanmySLE) October 20, 2020
Many others posted memes mocking Tiffany's speech.
—Meg Stalter (@megstalter) October 20, 2020
—tyler oakley (@tyleroakley) October 19, 2020
@nickstoptalking Tiffany Trump loves ##gay people!! ##fyp
♬ original sound - Nick Lehmann
Others made memes and tweets riffing off of what they say as contradictory messaging in the speech.
—Ryan (@ryanntweets_) October 20, 2020
—casey anthony funko pop (@homeofsexuals) October 20, 2020
—Mike Tague (@rhymeswithbeg) October 20, 2020
Will.i.am, the founding member of the Black Eyed Peas, even spoke out against the use of "I Gotta Feeling" at the event, writing, ".@TiffanyATrump, I see that you walked out to #iGOTTAFEELING...but given the inequalities in America affecting LGBTQ, people of color and the disenfranchised, this song would have been more appropriate to walk out to..." and linking to a music video for "The Love" by the Black Eyes and Jennifer Hudson, a pro-Biden revamp of the group's 2003 hit "Where is the Love?"
—will.i.am (@iamwill) October 21, 2020
LGBTQ media advocacy group GLAAD called out the speech on Twitter, linking to the organization's "Trump Accountability Project," which tracks the administration's anti-LGBTQ actions, refocusing the discourse around the speech to how Trump's administration has affected the LGBTQ community.
—GLAAD (@glaad) October 20, 2020
- Read more:
- Tiffany Trump posted a quote from an ancient Persian poet after the president's former assistant told reporters her father didn't want to take pictures with her
- From a 58-bedroom estate to a helicopter fleet, here's how the Trump family spends their billions
- Tiffany Trump just spoke at the RNC — here's what we know about her
- Tiffany Trump's spring break trip to Serbia cost taxpayers at leats $23,000