Did I ever mention the time I interviewed Donald Trump? I didn’t? That’s so me; demure.
I’ve kept it quiet; pleaded the Fifth, if you will. Partly because it was 2012, the same year Gangnam Style was released, overshadowing all other events.
Also because it was about golf. And on the phone. The devil’s in the detail, you see.
Back then, Trump was channelling Braveheart as he fought to save all of Scotland from the oppressive scourge of renewable energy and not just (mostly) because he had opened his new Aberdeenshire course and huge turbines were in danger of spoiling the splendid view from the 17th.
A lot has happened in the intervening decade; Ed Balls on Strictly, Covid, a new King. And somehow Trump is leader of the free world for the second time running, striving to Make America Great Again.
If he’s not putting the wind up allies and adversaries alike with punitive tariffs and gerrymandering Greenland, he’s making bonkers declarations that Gaza could be the new Margate. As if.
Mad, bad, dangerous to know – arguably dangerouser not to know – Trump’s modus operandi is to disrupt, daze and disorient.
And then, out of nowhere, he only goes and scores a hole in one. Yes, Mr President, a man with the proclivities of an alley cat and a sexual assault verdict against him, has just made a stand for women and against the creeping menace of transgender athletes.
To that end, he has signed an executive order banning transgender girls and women from participating in female sports events in schools and colleges in the US.
And, get this, he was brave enough to call it exactly what it is: “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports”. Talk about the Land of the Free. In this country, banding about the “m” word is enough to get you cancelled, publicly humiliated and sentenced to a lifetime of hairy-chested manspreaders creepily sharing your changing room.
Trump wants national sporting bodies to adopt the same biology-first approach across the board. And although Wednesday’s order only covers federally funded sports, he will not allow overseas transgender athletes to compete against women at the next Olympics.
“In Los Angeles in 2028, my administration will not stand by and watch men beat and batter female athletes,” Trump said, a reference to Imane Khelif, the Algerian who won gold in women’s boxing at the Paris Olympics, despite sex tests revealing male chromosomes.
“We’re not going to let it happen… the war on women’s sports is over.”
Dear Lord, the cognitive dissonance of it! Whose side is he on? Mine, obviously. But surely if he’s on my side, that means…I must be – very, very confused, Dear Reader.
I spoiled my ballot at the 2024 General Election because I felt politically homeless. The Tories didn’t deserve to win. They said so themselves.
But Labour would never get my vote until they stopped kowtowing to a tiny trans lobby of angry, overbearing men cosplaying as female and claiming – ridiculously – to have literally changed sex in order to bully and oppress biological women.
The issue – let me stress – isn’t transgenderism per se. Transgender people should be afforded the same rights and protections as anyone else. But that, crucially, means abiding by the same rules and respecting the same boundaries.
Sport is about categories not feelings. If the scales show you don’t qualify, you can’t box at welterweight. In the Paralympics, disabilities are minutely calibrated to ensure fairness.
So how on earth did we ever reach the stage where a man simply saying he is a woman equates with being a woman? It’s nonsensical – and misogynistic.
In the US, trans swimmer Lia Thomas went from being the country’s 554th-ranked male swimmer to winning a national college title when competing against women.
The day before Trump’s announcement, three former members of the University of Pennsylvania swimming team took action against their university and various other institutions to expunge the records set by Thomas, who was their teammate.
They claim the experience of competing alongside and sharing a locker room with Thomas left them “repeatedly emotionally traumatized” by the violation of their privacy. I’m not surprised.
