Trump’s ‘they/them’ ads combined culture war, economic worries to make effective pitch: expert

In the final days of President-elect Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, he honed in on a culture war issue that may have locked in more swing votes and with it the election, a conservative activist instrumental in the ad campaign argues.

“Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you,” the narrator of Trump’s advertisement said.

The ad, which focused on men in women’s sports and Vice President Kamala Harris’ track record of ushering in sex change procedures for incarcerated people in California, was in part due to the influence of American Principles Project’s president, Terry Schilling, who began pushing out these ads in 2019.

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Harris and Trump. (Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

Schilling said back then, the issue was “too premature” to make waves in the conservative movement. But over the course of the Biden-Harris administration, as the gender ideology wars began to make it into the mainstream spotlight, Schilling believed it would be a winning issue for conservatives.

The American Principles Project spent tens of millions on ads highlighting the transgender issue in states across the country, and Schilling went to Mar-a-Lago a few months ago to personally encourage Trump to lean in on the opportunity.

“The cue of giving sex change procedures to inmates is so radical, it’s so extreme, and it’s one of those issues that touches on not just the culture war, but the economy, too,” Schilling told Fox News Digital. 

“You have a lot of families that are hurting, they’re struggling to put food on the table,” Schilling said. “They’re struggling to be able to afford to send their kids to a decent school where they can learn to read and write properly, and they’re scrapping all their pains together, and then they see that their government is paying to give people that committed very serious crimes that are in federal prisons, sex change procedures that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

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(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

“When you go to prison, you have to lose some rights, and it was an issue that really resonated,” he continued. “Trump gets so much credit. I have heard from several people that that maniac-madman-genius actually came up with that closing line of, ‘Kamala Harris is for they/them, Donald Trump’s for you.’ He’s so good at the branding.”

Schilling said there was record-breaking fundraising for his organization this year, noting a 50% increase from the previous year, growing from $12 million to $18 million. He highlighted that this funding has driven extensive research, ad production, and messaging guidance, which has reportedly influenced Republicans to focus on transgender issues in campaign ads. 

According to Schilling, Republicans spent over $215 million on ads targeting transgender issues.

Last year, Schilling’s organization produced an ad featuring women’s activist Riley Gaines advocating for candidate Daniel Cameron against Democrat Andy Beshear for governor in Kentucky. 

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CatholicVote’s anti-Harris ad declares, “Kamala Harris stands with they/them. Not with you.”  (YouTube screenshot | CatholicVote)

In August 2023, APP released a post-2022 election report, titled, “The Failed Red Wave: Lessons from the GOP Letdown,” arguing that Republicans performed poorly in part because they failed to take advantage of Democrats’ cultural extremism on transgender issues.

This summer, APP announced an $18 million ad campaign exposing Kamala Harris and other Democrats’ stances on transgender issues.

“We spent over seven figures on polling and focus groups and message testing, and we’ve been passing it out, beating our heads against the wall with candidates up and down the ballot. And 2024 was the year that it finally broke through,” Schilling said. 

The ads came during a time during the election cycle where several actions by the Biden-Harris administration gave the messaging a boost. 

In June, health officials in the Biden administration urged international transgender health nonprofit, World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), to omit the age limit in its guidelines for transgender surgical procedures for adolescents – and succeeded – according to unsealed court documents.

More than a dozen states in the U.S. have enacted bans on surgical procedures and hormonal prescriptions for transgender youth. 

Idaho, North Dakota, Florida, Oklahoma and Alabama have passed laws making it a felony to perform sex changes on children. Several blue states, meanwhile, have enacted “sanctuary state” laws in recent years shielding medical providers from facing penalties for conducting transgender procedures on adolescents. 

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Trump’s success in reaching people in this issue hasn’t come without its opposition. The executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union pledged “to combat” the forthcoming Trump administration’s proposed policies on critical issues such as abortion, border security and LGBTQ rights.

The left-wing civil liberties organization launched 434 legal challenges against President Trump during his first term, and will continue during his second term, according to Romero’s open letter. They plan, for example, to use the courts to “invalidate Trump administration policies” impacting the gay and transgender communities, such as actions that keep biological males out of women’s bathrooms or that prevent them from playing on women’s sports teams.

Fox News Digital’s Alec Schemmel contributed to this report.