Trans activist slams Trump for using footage of them in campaign ad: ‘They want to eradicate us’

James Rose says former president used the footage against their will

A trans activist has hit out at former President Donald Trump for using footage of them with Dylan Mulvaney in a new campaign advertisment.

James Rose, a genderfluid TikTok creator, took to social media this week to accuse the former president and his political movement of endangering the lives of trans and genderqueer Americans.

“My life is worth living,” Rose said. “It does not feel like it in this moment when the former president of the United States is using my videos against my will as an ad campaign for anti-trans stuff, but I know that my life is worth living and every trans person is worth living too — and I want you to know no matter how hard they attack us, I will always love us twice as hard and I’m not the only one.”

The ad, which was posted to social media platforms on May 15, features footage of Rose and Mulvaney taken from a video the duo filmed last year for Mulvaney’s “Diary of a Woman” video series. Their faces appear on the screen while a narrator inveighs against the “global elitists” who “tell you a woman is a man and a man is a woman.” Mulvaney became a lightning rod for the right after she signed a short-lived advertising deal with Bud Light earlier this year.

“They have corrupted every facet of American government — weaponised it against you,” the narrator says.

The ad is familiar in tone to observers of Trump’s first two campaigns for president in its near-apocolyptic vision of the state of American society and leadership and promise that only Trump himself can fix the myriad issues facing the country.

“One name, one movement, can change all that for us,” the narrator announces. “Put America — the middle class — first.”

Rose posted a three-minute video to TikTok in the aftermath of the release of the advertisement in which they were in tears discussing the ad’s effect on them personally and what it portends for the coming campaign.

“I know that they want me and people like me, and people like you if you’re trans, to feel shame about our transness,” Rose said. “That is a goal. They want to eradicate us, and if they make examples of people like me and my gorgeous friend Dylan then they are one step closer to that eradication.”

Trans Americans and their allies have been warning for months about the intention of rapidly intensifying legislative attacks that have seen different states ban gender-affirming healthcare for minors, ban trans people from competing in sports, ban drag performances in public, and more.

By the end of May, state lawmakers had introduced more than 500 bills impacting LGBT+ people in 2023, including 220 bills specifically targeting trans and nonbinary Americans, according to an analysis from the Human Rights Campaign — and if Mr Trump’s advertisement is any indication, it appears that the right-wing focus on attacking trans people will be a feature of the next presidential election.

“This presidential campaign — I’m just predicting it’s going to be horrible,” Rose said. “Not only for James personally... but for trans people in general. We are going to have to hold each other in community tighter than ever.”