![]() To be sure, his arguments were usually framed in terms of offering to protect LGBT citizens from Muslim terrorists, in effect making LGBT rights a wedge issue dividing a sexual minority from a religious minority. He also made a greater effort than most national Republicans to court LGBT votes. Thrice married and with a notorious playboy past, Trump has only the barest familiarity with the Bible, which was reason enough for some people to assume that he had little personal passion for cultural war. Trump campaigned as a different sort of Republican, one unbeholden to the party’s orthodoxies. While Thiel’s dream that Trump would be keen to ditch hot-button social issues now seems like an obvious delusion, it’s worth remembering that Trump himself gave reasons for entertaining the fantasy. He has also reinstated the gag rule on international agencies that provide abortion counseling, appointed figures like Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, and signed a law that will allow states to deny funding to Planned Parenthood. And these are not the only ways in which Trump is governing as a right-wing cultural warrior. In July, the president tweeted that he would reinstate a ban on transgender people in the military, and this week, he made good on the threat, issuing a directive that bars new transgender recruits, blocks funding for sex reassignment surgeries, and gives Defense Secretary James Mattis six months to decide whether to expel the thousands of transgender soldiers already serving. One of Trump’s first acts as president was to issue a letter withdrawing federal protection for transgender high school students who want to use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identities. Far from sharing Thiel’s attitude that no one should care about “who gets to use which bathroom,” Trump has shown he cares deeply. Now that the candidate Thiel endorsed is seven months into a uniquely destructive presidency, it seems clear that his hopes were misplaced. He is a builder, and it’s time to rebuild America.” Like Thiel himself, he would stick to grand construction projects, such as strengthening the economy and investing in infrastructure. Who cares?” The shining promise of Trump was that as a businessman by trade and temperament, he had no interest in seeing cultural issues divide the country. This is a distraction from our real problems. ![]() ![]() Now we are told that the great debate is about who gets to use which bathroom. “When I was a kid, the great debate was about how to defeat the Soviet Union,” Thiel recalled. ![]() but fake culture wars only distract us from our economic decline, and nobody in this race is being honest about it except Donald Trump.” The way Thiel saw it, these “fake culture wars” had eclipsed attempts to deal with real problems. More than a year ago in Cleveland, Thiel told the GOP crowd, “I am proud to be gay. Silicon Valley tycoon Peter Thiel delivered one of the most memorable speeches of last year’s Republican National Convention, predicting that Donald Trump would, swiftly and without mercy, end the culture wars. ![]()
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