At a campaign rally in Wisconsin on Tuesday, Donald Trump decried President Biden for issuing a White House proclamation of March 31 as the annual Trans Day of Visibility, which this year happened to fall on Easter. “What the h--- was Biden thinking when he declared Easter Sunday to be trans visibility day?” Trump complained, to loud boos from the audience. “Such total disrespect to Christians.”
The former president omitted that Biden has observed Trans Day of Visibility on the same day every year of his presidency, and the overlap with Easter was purely coincidental. Instead, Trump turned from stoking fears of Christian persecution to another campaign trail favorite: predicting his election victory. “November 5th is going to be called something else,” he said. “Christian visibility day, when Christians turn out in numbers that nobody has ever seen before.” The crowd reacted, of course, with raucous applause.
He is dangerously priming his voters for a repeat of his multipronged assault on the 2020 election results.
In the last few days, many GOP lawmakers and conservative figures have joined the ginned-up anger that trans people are getting special rights and recognition at the expense of Christians. But in linking “Christian visibility” to the election results, Trump is doing more than feeding into his base’s outrage of the week. He is dangerously priming his voters for a repeat of his multipronged assault on the 2020 election results and the peaceful transfer of power. After all, in the minds of Trump loyalists, if Christians (that is, Trump’s loyal base of white evangelical Christians) show up on Election Day in unprecedented numbers, how could he lose?
The crack-up over the coincidence of Easter and the Trans Day of Visibility was potent fodder. (Biden also issued a declaration recognizing March 31 as César Chávez Day, but somehow that escaped the right’s notice.) Trump backers called it “a slap in the face to all Christians in America” and “a direct assault on Christianity.” House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed that Biden had “betrayed the central tenet of Easter,” Christ’s resurrection. “There is no length Biden and the Democrats won’t go to to mock your faith, and to thumb his nose at God,” tweeted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.
Paula White-Cain, Trump’s top religious adviser throughout his presidency, said the proclamation “offended masses of Christians — people of faith — who are the backbone of this country and it moved them to swift action voicing their commitment to fight harder than ever before for those who support their values, fight for their freedoms and certainly recognize their most holy sacred day.” White-Cain was issuing both a statement and a warning that this supposed Biden transgression would only redouble evangelical fervor for Trump.
Many Christians disagreed. Rachael Ward, for example, a United Church of Christ minister, wrote on her denomination’s website that the convergence of the Trans Day of Visibility and Easter Sunday “is an invitation and reminder that when God came out for humanity in full love, God meant every single one of us.” In its online magazine, the Presbyterian Church USA similarly observed that the dual date allows one to “practice the eye-opening hospitality” of Jesus, adding, “We see Jesus when we embrace our trans siblings.”
But Republicans and their Christian right allies have spent the better part of a decade demonizing trans people as a threat to both public safety and “God’s design” for gender roles. The long campaign for legislation to ban trans people from bathrooms and locker rooms, prevent them from participating in school sports, and their access to essential health care has successfully pushed transphobia to the fore of priorities for the Christian right base. Trump knows this, and is more than happy to milk it for all it's worth. The tenor of his speeches of late, especially those delivered to evangelical audiences, are built around a claim that Christian America has fallen into an apocalyptic hellscape, and only Trump can rescue it.
Not only are white evangelicals Trump’s most dependable voters, they also are the only religious demographic of whom a majority believes Trump’s stolen election lie.
Trump’s linking of “Christian visibility” and the election is similarly deliberate. In his speech, Trump appeared to equate “Christian Visibility Day” with big evangelical turnout at the polls. But given their history of supporting his stolen election lies, it could also be heard as a suggestion that they make themselves available to defend him against a possible loss. Not only are white evangelicals Trump’s most dependable voters, they also are the only religious demographic of whom a majority believes Trump’s stolen election lie. A September 2023 Public Religion Research Institute survey found that “six in ten white evangelical Protestants (60%) say the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, compared with 38% of white mainline/non-evangelical Protestants and white Catholics, 24% of Hispanic Catholics, 23% of religiously unaffiliated Americans, and 11% of Black Protestants.”
Trump’s declaration of Election Day as “Christian Visibility Day” is more than a get-out-the-vote technique. It’s a blaring alarm warning us that he could use his base’s persecution complex about the “radical left” and their messianic zeal for him to claim that any election loss must have been “rigged” not only against him but against them, too. As Jan. 6 showed, that zeal can easily turn into terrible consequences for the country.