'Here & Now' Highlights: Abigail Swetz
Here's what our guest on the Oct. 25, 2024 episode said about rhetorical attacks against transgender people by the Trump campaign.
By Frederica Freyberg | Here & Now
October 28, 2024
In the final days before the Nov. 5 election, the Trump campaign is blitzing the airwaves with political ads attacking Vice President Kamala Harris over transgender rights. Abigail Swetz of Fair Wisconsin, which advocates for the LGBTQ+ community said “politicians should know better than to attack people.”
Abigail Swetz
Executive Director, Fair Wisconsin
- On the campaign trail in Wisconsin and elsewhere, Republican former President Donald Trump has stated that his Democratic challenger Harris supports taking children from their parents and without their consent performing transition surgery on minors at school. Swetz called that a dangerous lie.
- Swetz: “It is a lie. And I’m glad we’re calling it a lie because it is not only untrue, it is meant to deceive and frankly, divide and create distrust with our educators and our medical professionals. And I find that lie absolutely disgusting.”
- Swetz says the impact of such statements on members of the LGBTQ+ community is hurtful in more ways than one.
- Swetz: “I think first we have to realize that they are ethically wrong because they are dehumanizing and lies and frankly, a ridiculous distraction. And that kind of hateful language, it does have a cost. It has an emotional cost, because turning people into issues and weapons does have an impact that is quite dangerous on the LGBTQ+ community and frankly, on everyone, because I think it has this impact of eroding empathy, and that is really dangerous”
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