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Jen Psaki warns Democrats against accepting the GOP’s anti-transgender narratives

Jen Psaki featured speaker 2023 SXSW festival

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“It’s important not to yield to manufactured panic and to align with the actual facts before making sweeping claims,” the former White House Press secretary said on her MSNBC show.

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On Sunday’s Inside with Jen Psaki on MSNBC, the former White House press secretary delivered a scathing critique of the Republican Party’santi-transgender rhetoric and urged Democrats to confront misinformation head-on. Psaki dissected theGOP’s obsession with transgender issues, highlighting their deliberate efforts to weaponize fear and misinformation for political gain. She also warned Democrats against yielding to “manufactured panic” and called for a fact-based response that defends LGBTQ+ rights while engaging voters effectively.

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“This is a good time for Democrats to self-reflect about what went wrong and what to do better moving forward,” Psaki said during the segment. “But during that process, it’s important not to yield to manufactured panic and to align with the actual facts before making sweeping claims. Echoing and adopting the panic from the other side is not leading. It’s not meeting people where they are. It’s simply falling prey to right-wing propaganda without checking the facts first.”

Psaki’s remarks came as the Democratic Party grapples with its messaging after a disappointing showing in the 2024 elections. She singled out Republicans’ targeted attacks on transgender rights, which she said are part of a larger strategy to stoke division and rally their base. Republicans spent more than $200 million on anti-trans ads last cycle. In her segment, Psaki played a clip of President-elect Donald Trump, who admitted during the campaign that his focus on anti-transgender rhetoric was intentional. “Talk about transgender,” Trump said in the clip. “Everyone goes crazy.” Republicans have introduced more than 558 anti-LGBTQ+ bills in 2024 alone, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which tracks such pieces of legislation.

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Psaki emphasized how Republicans amplified these attacks to create a “manufactured crisis” around issues like transgender athletes in youth sports, despite their lack of widespread relevance. “If that were actually an issue at thousands of schools across the country, it would be worthy of a debate,” Psaki said. “But there are just incredibly few examples of transgender girls playing in youth sports, and when we see those examples, there isn’t evidence that these kids are a threat to safety or fairness.”

Psaki cited data from Utah and South Dakota, where bans on transgender athletes were enacted despite the states having only one transgender girl athlete each at the time. “Legislators in more than 20 states could not state a single instance in their own state or region where a transgender athlete competing was a problem,” she noted.

Psaki also addressed backlash against U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, a Democrat from Massachusetts, who recently faced criticism for his comments about transgender athletes. Psaki played a clip of Moulton, who said, “I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete.” In response, Psaki pointed out that these statements risk playing into Republican narratives. “Democrats need to self-reflect, but we must not do so by adopting harmful right-wing framing or misinformed rhetoric,” she said.

In an interview with The Advocate last Thursday, Moulton defended his comments, arguing that Democrats must address contentious issues head-on to counter Republican attacks. “What I said is that we have to be willing to have difficult discussions about contentious issues in the Democratic Party,” Moulton said. “If we refuse to engage, then Republicans are going to define the terms of the debate. And when they do that, a lot of people are going to get hurt.”

Watch Jen Psaki’s critique of Democrats’ response to GOP’s anti-trans messaging below.

- YouTubeyoutu.be