DeSantis campaign video ‘homophobic,’ says conservative LGBTQ+ group
NEW YORK — A prominent group that represents LGBTQ+ conservatives says a video shared by Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign that slams rival Donald Trump for his past support of gay and transgender people “ventured into homophobic territory.”
The “DeSantis War Room” Twitter account shared the video on Friday — the last day of
June’s LGBTQ+ Pride Month — that features footage of Trump at the Republican National Convention in 2016 saying he would “do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens.” Trump had been pledging protection from terrorist attacks weeks after the shooting at Orlando’s gay nightclub Pulse, which was the deadliest mass shooting in US history at that time.
The video also highlights “LGBTQ for Trump” T-shirts sold by the former president’s campaign and his past comments saying he would be comfortable with Caitlyn Jenner, the former Olympic decathlete who came out as a transgender woman in 2015, using any bathroom at Trump Tower and OK with transgender women competing one day in the Miss Universe pageant, which Trump owned at the time of those remarks.
The video then suddenly veers in a different direction, accompanied by dark, thumping music and images of DeSantis, the Florida governor who is trailing Trump by wide margins in the polls for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
It promotes headlines that DeSantis signed “the most extreme slate of anti-trans laws in modern history” and a “draconian anti-trans bathroom bill.”
The images are spliced together with footage of muscular, shirtless men and several Hollywood actors, including Brad Pitt, seen wearing a leather mask from the movie “Troy.”
“To wrap up ‘Pride Month,’ let’s hear from the politician who did more than any other Republican to celebrate it,” the DeSantis campaign tweeted.
The video drew immediate criticism from prominent LGBTQ+ Republicans, including the Log Cabin Republicans, which bills itself as the nation’s “largest Republican organization dedicated to representing LGBT conservatives.”
“Today’s message from the DeSantis campaign War Room is divisive and desperate. Republicans and other commonsense conservatives know Ron Desantis has alienated swingstate and younger voters,” the group said in a tweet, adding that DeSantis’s “extreme rhetoric has just ventured into homophobic territory.”
The group said his “rhetoric will lose hard-fought gains in critical races across the nation. This old playbook has been tried in the past and has failed — repeatedly.” The post said DeSantis’s “naive policy positions are dangerous and politically stupid.”
Jenner accused DeSantis’s campaign of using “horribly divisive tactics!”
“DeSantis has hit a new low,” Jenner wrote on Twitter.
The video comes as Republicans have been wading into increasingly hostile anti-LGBTQ+ territory, attacking Pride Month celebrations, trying to ban displays of rainbow Pride flags, and passing legislation to limit drag shows, along with broad attacks on transgender rights.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Biden, Swedish PM to meet in effort to boost NATO bid
WASHINGTON — President Biden will host Sweden’s prime minister at the White House on Wednesday in a show of solidarity as the United States presses for the Nordic nation’s entry into NATO, a bid stalled by objections from two members of the Western military alliance.
Biden and Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson plan to “review our growing security cooperation and reaffirm their view that Sweden should join NATO as soon as possible,” the White House said in a statement Saturday. The leaders also will discuss the war in Ukraine and China.
Sweden and neighbor Finland dropped their longstanding military neutrality after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and the countries applied for NATO membership, seeking protection under the organization’s security umbrella.
Finland, which shares an 832-mile border with Russia, joined NATO in April. Sweden, which has avoided military alliances for more than 200 years, has seen its ascension delayed by Turkey and Hungary; NATO requires the unanimous approval of all members to expand.
NATO had hoped the road to Sweden’s membership would be smoothed out before the alliance’s summit July 11-12 in Lithuania. Sweden’s entry would be a highly symbolic moment and the latest indication of how Russia’s war is driving countries to join the alliance.
But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has resisted, with his government accusing Sweden of being too lenient toward groups that it says pose a security threat, including militant Kurdish organizations and people associated with a 2016 coup attempt in Turkey.
NATO Secretary-General
Jens Stoltenberg said he would gather senior officials from Turkey, Sweden, and Finland this coming Thursday to try to overcome Turkey’s objections.
Hungary also has yet to ratify Sweden’s bid. Hungarian lawmakers said a long-delayed parliamentary vote on that would not would not happen until the autumn legislative session.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government has alleged that Swedish politicians have told “blatant lies” about the condition of his country’s democracy.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Ruling orders Proud Boys to pay $1m to Black church
WASHINGTON — A judge on Friday awarded more than $1 million to a Black church in downtown Washington, D.C., that sued the far-right Proud Boys for tearing down and burning a Black Lives Matter banner during a 2020 protest.
Superior Court Associated Judge Neal A. Kravitz also barred the extremist group and its leaders from coming near the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church or making threats or defamatory remarks against the church or its pastor for five years.
The ruling was a default judgment issued after the defendants failed to show up in court.
Two Black Lives Matter banners were pulled down from Metropolitan AME and another historically Black church and burned during clashes between pro-Donald Trump supporters and counterdemonstrators in December 2020.
The destruction took place after weekend rallies by thousands of people in support of Trump’s baseless claims that he won a second term, which led to dozens of arrests, several stabbings, and injuries to police officers.
Metropolitan AME sued the Proud Boys and their leaders, alleging they violated D.C. and federal law by trespassing and destroying religious property in a bias-related conspiracy.
Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, of Miami, publicly acknowledged setting fire to one banner, which prosecutors said was stolen from Asbury United Methodist Church.
In July 2021, Tarrio pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor criminal charges of property destruction and attempted possession of a high-capacity magazine.
He was sentenced to more than five months in jail.
Tarrio and other members of the Proud Boys were separately convicted of seditious conspiracy charges as part of a plot to attack the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a desperate bid to keep Trump in power after the Republican lost the 2020 presidential election.
ASSOCIATED PRESS