(LifeSiteNews) – President Donald Trump took the rare step of changing one of his trademark Truth Social posts Thursday amid conservative backlash for initially suggesting that gender “transition” surgeries on minors would be acceptable as long as parents gave their approval.
Trump posted five bullet points ostensibly from the SAVE America Act, an election integrity measure the White House is adamant about but would require changing the Senate filibuster rules to pass (which many Republicans are averse to for the power doing so would give a future Democrat Congress). The post originally read:
THE SAVE AMERICA ACT!
1. ALL VOTERS MUST SHOW VOTER I.D. (IDENTIFICATION!).
2. ALL VOTERS MUST SHOW PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP IN ORDER TO VOTE.
3. NO MAIL-IN BALLOTS (EXCEPT FOR ILLNESS, DISABILITY, MILITARY, OR TRAVEL!).
4. NO MEN IN WOMEN’S SPORTS.
5. NO TRANSGENDER MUTILATION SURGERY FOR CHILDREN, WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN APPROVAL OF THE PARENTS.
The fourth and fifth points were confusing additions, as the SAVE America Act strictly concerns voting rules and does not contain anything about gender issues. But that incongruity was quickly overshadowed by the furor over the implication that mutilating minors would be acceptable as long as it had parental consent, effectively leaving troubled children at the mercy of ideological extremist parents.
Without acknowledging the controversy, Trump deleted the post and replaced it with a nearly identical version that edited point 5 to simply end at “NO TRANSGENDER MUTILATION SURGERY FOR CHILDREN,” without the qualifier.
JUST IN: President Trump has changed his Truth Social post where he suggested that children should be allowed to transition genders with approval from their parents.
Before: NO TRANSGENDER MUTILATION SURGERY FOR CHILDREN WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN APPROVAL OF THE PARENTS.
Now:… pic.twitter.com/I24fakdz9B
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) March 5, 2026
This is not the first time Trump has struck a moderate tone on transitioning minors. Less than a month before the 2024 election, in a clip promoted by the Trump campaign and still up today, he said that “this is the party, the Republican Party, of common sense (…) We need borders, we need fair elections, we don’t want men playing in women’s sports, we don’t want transgender operations without parental consent.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “This is the party, the Republican Party, of common sense… We need borders, we need fair elections, we don’t want men playing in women’s sports, we don’t want transgender operations without parental consent.” pic.twitter.com/LMLbX4KbD3
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 15, 2024
As a liberal celebrity businessman in his life before politics, Trump has a mixed record on LGBT issues. In 2012, as the owner of the Miss Universe beauty pageant, he repeatedly endorsed the inclusion of “transgender women,” i.e. men, in competition with actual women, in the name of what the Trump organization called “modernized” rules at the time, eliciting praise from LGBT pressure group GLAAD.
While running for president in 2016, Trump criticized a North Carolina law banning male students from female restrooms and said anyone should be allowed to “use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate.” By the time he was in office, he flipped on the issue, rejecting Obama-era guidelines on the subject and announcing that the Department of Education would no longer indulge bathroom-related “discrimination” complaints.
A consistent supporter of same-sex “marriage,” Trump nominated a variety of pro-LGBT officials to government posts and judicial vacancies and continued an Obama-era executive order on “gender identity nondiscrimination” and U.S. support for international recognition of homosexual relations at the United Nations Human Rights Council. His campaign actively courted LGBT-identifying voters with rainbow merchandise. Over the years, he has also allowed his Mar-a-Lago residence to be used for same-sex “weddings” and Log Cabin Republican fundraisers.
On the other hand, Trump’s first term prioritized religious liberty and was generally aligned with social conservatives against the gender-fluidity movement, from banning gender-confused soldiers from the military to protecting women from having to share close quarters such as homeless shelters with men claiming to be transgendered. His White House also opposed the so-called “Equality Act” and maintained a biological definition of sex in its implementation of federal laws and regulations.
Since returning to office, Trump has been a consistent ally of social conservatives on gender issues. He has taken multiple executive actions to reverse the Biden administration’s transgender policies, including an order that ends all federal support for “transition” procedures on minors, rescinds or amends all of the Biden health bureaucracy’s past endorsements of underage “transitioning,” and calls for a review of the medical literature on the subject, enforcing all existing restrictions on underage “transitioning,” and taking regulatory action to “end” the practice to the greatest extent possible under current law.
Another order prohibits males who claim to be female from competing against actual women in sex-specific athletic programs at schools receiving government funding. A third disqualifies gender-confused individuals from military service and prohibits military health services from conducting “transition” treatments and procedures.
