Brigadier Bone Spurs Has One Hell of a Nerve

Today, the world's best friend of the LGBT community, President Trump, decided that to be the bestest friend he could possibly be and took it upon himself to shield transgender people from harm. Not from hate crimes, not from prejudiced bathroom issues, but from voluntarily serving in the United States military. Apparently the sudden realization came so quickly to him that he didn't even tell the military, who when contacted by the media said, "Call the White House." He also apparently waited until his Secretary of Defense was on vacation in case that vile warmonger was planning on deploying the 82^nd Estradiol Brigade before he could stop him. Oh, you did know that Trump handed over the ability to deploy soldiers to his Secretary of Defense, right?

Seriously though, as a transgender person and a veteran; screw this guy. After the Department of Defense, the RAND Corporation, and his own generals determined it would not affect the military's ability to bomb things back to the stone age and had already begun to incorporate transgender people into the service, Trump decides, clearly on a whim, to reverse that process based off outright lies and misinformation in order to do.... I dunno. Seriously, this decision makes no rational sense, and that's important to note.

Trump is the ascended cosmic form of the chickenhawk Republican. Trump, who got sent to military school because he was such a rotten little child, is the kind of guy who thinks a baseball cap with some gold leaves and a leather jacket makes him General Patton when he's actually more like the kind of guy who thinks his time in Junior ROTC and mad Call of Duty skills makes him an 1980s action hero.

During Vietnam, Brigadier Bone Spurs got numerous deferments from the draft for bad feet while participating in competitive sports in high school. Then he had the audacity to say that Senator John McCain, who was tortured in a Vietnamese POW camp to the point he couldn't lift his arms over his head anymore and refused early release because his father was an admiral, wasn't a hero because heroes don't get captured. Later, La Petite Corporal lied about how much money he raised for veterans after catching months of grief for those remarks and his terrible history with vets. You know what he once did? He complained to the New York legislature that disabled veterans, who were fundraising and soliciting donations near his building, were bringing down his property values.

Seriously, this guy who once compared his sleeping around in the '80s and avoiding the clap to Vietnam complained that veterans were hurting the value of his craptastic eyesore of brass and cheap marble on 5^th Avenue, a building with all the aesthetics of another soft-handed man with a questionable genital nature and delusions of military greatness.

The heinousness of this is off-the-charts. Trump initially pandered to LGBT voters by holding up a Pride flag someone shoved in his hands and then followed that up a year later by grossly disregarding the sacrifice trans soldiers make, the lifelong suffering they endure, and the neglect of the government they serve. The cherry on top is that a White House official admitted it's all a political distraction. Trump is like a cruel child, treating real-life servicemembers as little green army men that he's melting under a magnifying glass.

I spent almost 10 years in the Army. During that time, I spent time struggling with my gender identity and left the service at the peak of the war in Iraq. I, and many like me, would probably have stayed in the service if they could have only been able to be themselves. Soldiers generally only care how good of a job you do and how reliable you are in a fight; in my time in the service there were openly gay soldiers who should have been discharged, but no one honestly cared because they were good soldiers.

Trump claims that transgender servicemembers come at a great cost, roughly anywhere between $3 million to $8 million according to actual studies and not the accountants for his perpetually bankrupt businesses. The annual medical care for transgender servicemembers costs about as much as one of his golf trips -- the military already spends five times as much on Viagra (!) than it would on trans health care.

Trump demands loyalty and respect from all who serve him, and any properly trained soldier, or even decent human being knows those things are earned and reciprocal. Leaders are loyal to and respect the people they lead. I have none of those things for Trump since he has given none to me as a veteran or as a transgender person. He has mocked, disrespected, outright exploited, and done direct harm to me and people like me. I could at least give loyalty and respect to our last Republican president since he at least gave some to me, but not this man. Never. Honestly, if Trump sees my transgender and veteran identities as nothing more than a speed bump for a bus, well, he can suck the Iraqi sand off my transgender cock.

AMANDA KERRI is a writer and comedian based in Oklahoma City. Follow her on Twitter @EternalKerri.