Trump Goes to the Mattis on Trans Policy
by Tony Perkins, FRC:
Senate liberals haven’t had the easiest of times adjusting to Donald Trump. After the last decade of shaming conservatives, they’re not exactly used to Republican leaders standing up and confronting them on issues like sexuality. But this president is a rare breed. His policies have never been about what the Left thinks or how he’s labeled. They’ve been about what he can do to make America better. If that means bucking the status quo or offending people who are used to being coddled, he’s willing. And his military transgender policy proves it.
In the year since President Trump ended the days of Obama-era social experimentation in the ranks, Democrats probably believed that they could scare the new administration into submission. When that didn’t happen, and a new memo outlining his policy appeared at the Pentagon last month, they were rattled. Yesterday, in a hearing with Defense Secretary James Mattis, they looked for weak spots to pressure the White House into changing its mind. Fortunately, they found none.
Despite the ranting of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) that Mattis was somehow harming the military by not letting the $3.7 transgender distraction continue, the defense chief held the line. (Video begins at 1:16 here.) Gillibrand accused the Pentagon of not doing its research, despite more than 45 pages of data that proved what a disaster this confusion would be. “It appears,” she says, “that this report your department has issued is not based on the department’s data or science, but rather on quote ‘potential risks’ that the authors cannot back up. In fact,” she continued, “this seems to me to be the same unfounded claims and unfounded concerns that led the opposition to repealing ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’… I think you need to do a lot more work on this topic to inform yourselves.”
Mattis said he “regretted” the way Gillibrand presented the issue, but told her “it would be ‘impossible'” for the service chiefs to answer those questions. For starters, President Obama and then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter never bothered asking them about the policy. Of course, we know from testimonies then that both the Army and Marine Corps had been vocal about their objections to the change. Yet even now, Gillibrand claims, not one member of the branch’s brass will complain about it.
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