GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn Attacks Trans People, Joe Biden

Far-right Republican U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn has attacked transgender people and their supporters, including President Joe Biden, in a new tweet.

Blackburn sent out a tweet Monday night with an embedded video of 25-year-old trans woman Dylan Mulvaney, a TikTok influencer who's been chronicling her transition on the platform. The senator from Tennessee wrote, "Dylan Mulvaney, Joe Biden, and radical left-wing lunatics want to make this absurdity normal."

In the video, Mulvaney "says transgender women should not feel compelled to avoid wearing tight pants or tuck their penises," NBC News notes. "Instead, she says, society should normalize trans women having visible bulges in their crotch area."

Biden has been a strong supporter of trans equality as president, and he demonstrated this again in a recent interview by Mulvaney on Now This News.He said states should not be able to ban gender-affirming health care, and he also said trans people should have the right to use the public restrooms that comport with their gender identity.

"I feel very, very strongly that you should have every single solitary right," he said in the interview, which has sparked backlash among conservatives.

Blackburn, on the other hand, has been consistently anti-LGBTQ+. She has a zero rating on the Human Rights Campaign's Congressional Scorecard. Last week she spoke at an anti-trans rally in Nashville organized by right-wing commentator Matt Walsh that particularly targeted Vanderbilt University Medical Center. This came even though the hospital has announced it's suspending gender-affirming surgeries for minors. It performs very few such procedures, and none of them are genital surgeries. The rally was also attended by members of the Proud Boys, a racist and anti-LGBTQ+ group.