Vance Suggests Upper-Middle Class Kids ‘Go Trans’ When Going to College, Says Trump Can Earn ‘Normal Gay Vote’

Keith Maher, CNN

(CNN) — Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance suggested in an interview aired Thursday that upper- and middle-class white kids are being encouraged to identify as transgender in order to get into elite colleges.

“Think about the incentives,” Vance told renowned podcast host Joe Rogan. “If you’re, well, a middle- or upper-middle-class white parent and the only thing you care about is whether your child gets into Harvard or Yale, obviously that path has become a lot more difficult for many. upper-middle class kids, but the only way these people can participate in the DEI bureaucracy in this country is by being transgender, and is there a dynamic where if you become transgender, it’s a way of rejecting your White Privilege.”

“It’s social significance. The only thing available in hyper-woke thinking is if you come out as gender non-binary,” the Ohio senator added.

Research found that due to discriminationharassment and lack of support they usually experience in junior high, students who identify as transgender are much less likely to have access to higher education in general, let alone an Ivy League school that is difficult to get into, compared to those people who identify with the gender that matches the gender. they were assigned at birth.

Vance gave a wide-ranging interview days after former President Donald Trump. did the same — a nearly three-hour speech that came after Rogan spent years saying he would not allow the former president to attend. In the final days of the presidential election, Trump and Vance used platforms ranging from podcasts to rallies to make their closing argument to voters.

Vice President Kamala Harris did not appear on the popular podcast, although Rogan wrote on X that he “really hopes we can pull this off” and that the Democrat’s campaign “hasn’t missed the podcast.”

Vance, calling his friend a “gay Reagan Democrat” who rejects the ideology of progressive politicians, said he believes the Trump-Vance ticket could bring what he called the “everyday gay vote.”

“Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump and I win the straight gay vote because, again, they just wanted to be left alone,” Vance said.

Vance also described a conversation he had with a “very conservative” woman from Mississippi during the Paris Air Show during the congressional delegation’s trip, about how she thought Paris was more conservative than some cities in the United States, and about his experience of seeing male genitalia in miniskirt. .

“Oh my God, this is not empowerment. This is not respect for lifestyle choices. We’re allowing a grown man to walk around in a miniskirt in broad daylight,” Vance said. “If you do this, then you are a pervert. And I want, I want us all to say, no matter what your political beliefs, just say, “No, this is weird, right?” You are not allowed to walk down the street and take pictures of children in the middle of the largest city in the world or in America.”

Vance also said he believes most Americans are open-minded about what he called “lifestyle choices,” but transgender people athletes who compete crossing the line in women’s sports.

He later suggested that Democrats want Americans to be “poorly healthy and overweight” because they would become more liberal.

“Have you seen all these studies that basically link testosterone levels in young men to conservative politics?” – Vance said. “Maybe this is what is happening. Maybe that’s why the Democrats want us all to be, you know, in poor health and overweight, because that means we’ll be… no, it means we’ll be more liberal.”

The campaign did not specify what research Vance was talking about.

Here are more key points from the interview:

Chinese hackers hacked Vance’s phone data

Vance on Thursday confirmed that hackers linked to the Chinese government targeted his and Trump’s phone networks, gaining access to major U.S. telecommunications networks.

“Maybe they have something. We’ll find out eventually. I try not to worry too much about things I can’t control,” Vance told Rogan.

“Luckily, I’m a pretty boring guy, so I don’t think they accomplished anything,” the Ohio senator said. “Apparently they were unable to receive encrypted messages that were not sent. So I’m very careful about using Signal and iMessage and all that stuff.”

CNN previously reported that Chinese hackers targeted people associated with the Trump-Vance and Harris-Waltz campaigns as part of a much broader cyberespionage program targeting high-profile US targets. Telephone conversations of current and former high-ranking US officials are sought after by foreign spies.

Vance, who said Trump’s phone also appeared to have been hacked, told Rogan that “the way they hacked our phones was they used hidden telecommunications infrastructure that was developed after the Patriot Act.”

He continued: “I was told that this infrastructure was used by a Chinese hacking organization… and that’s how they got into the Verizon network and that’s how they got into the AT&T network.”

The ability of U.S. law enforcement to conduct court-authorized surveillance of telecommunications infrastructure predates the Patriot Act and other post-9/11 national laws. But these laws have strengthened those capabilities and the relationship between U.S. law enforcement and telecommunications firms.

The Chinese government has denied allegations that it hacked US telecommunications infrastructure.

The cybersecurity industry calls the Chinese hacking group in question the “Salt Typhoon” and considers it a top-tier threat that is very difficult to detect. The investigation into the break-ins continues.

“It’s a pretty cool name,” Vance said. “If they have something against me, I can’t be too mad at them. At least they called themselves “Salt Typhoon”.

Vance doesn’t like the idea of prosecuting out-of-state abortions.

Vance also said he doesn’t like the idea that women could be prosecuted for having an out-of-state abortion if the procedure isn’t legal in their home state.

“Frankly, I don’t like the idea of people being arrested for moving freely around the country,” he told Rogan.

The Ohio senator said he had heard of the idea as a “threat” but had not seen it in practice.

As CNN previously reportedIn 2022, Vance was “sympathetic” to the view that a national ban was needed to prevent women from crossing state lines to get an abortion.

Rogan told Vance that “the concept of the zeitgeist is that abortion has always been, you know, Roe v. Wade, has always been the law of the land, and then all of a sudden it’s taken away and you have these religious people trying to dictate what women can and cannot do with their body.”

“Yeah. No, look, I mean, again, I understand that,” Vance responded. “I understand the resistance to this, but I, I think you can go, like, with so many other issues, you can go too far on this issue and it becomes an attempt to glorify something that is actually a very good thing if you accept that I think every pro-choice argument is a neutral thing that shouldn’t be celebrated.”

“I think very few people are celebrating, though,” Rogan said.

Vance told Rogan he understands the “autonomy value” of the abortion rights argument that men shouldn’t tell women what they should do with their bodies, but he stressed that lives also matter.

“It’s a balance that people are trying to strike,” Vance said.

This story has been updated with additional information.

CNN’s Sean Lingaas contributed to this report.

Chinese hackers hacked Vance’s phone data

Vance doesn’t like the idea of ​​prosecuting out-of-state abortions.

Vance doesn’t like the idea of prosecuting out-of-state abortions.