One of the dumbest accusations against Donald Trump is that he is “homophobic.” (I hate that term.)
To the extent that Joe Biden was trans-friendly–Biden seemed to spend an extraordinary amount of time and effort embracing transgender ideology–Trump is gay-friendly. And, in many ways, I think Trump is more so, because his comfort with gay people is not about virtue signaling, but comes naturally to him. With Biden, it seemed to be performative; with Trump, it’s just not a thing, but a state of being.
Read @ShawnMcCreesh’s sociological safari into Gay MAGA Washington, in which I tell Shawn that Trump is “like a drag queen. He’s outrageous, he’s transgressive, he’s catty, he’s a narcissist the likes of which we haven’t seen since Alexander the Great.”https://t.co/gLO9t7PQsQ
— James Kirchick (@jkirchick) August 26, 2025
Shawn McCreesh, the Times’ White House Correspondent, did a deep dive into the not-so-underground gay mafia that has enormous power in the Trump administration. The story was very well done for a New York Times piece, although I got the sense that McCreese is sympathetic to the view that MAGA gays are deluded into believing they are welcome within the Republican Party, when it’s quite clear that Trump finds being around gays to be quite natural and no big deal.
Whatever the case, it is undeniable that gays play an outsized role in MAGA, both inside and outside the administration. Jillian Michaels, the fitness guru, is both out and proud and enthusiastically MAHA, and Dave Rubin is a wildly popular MAGA commentator and unabashedly gay. Peter Thiel helped break Trump into Silicon Valley money and influence.
And inside the administration? Some of the most powerful administration figures are openly gay. They just don’t define their identity as gay activists.
Mr. Moran, 44, is the pasha of a new power tribe in the capital: the gay men of the Trump administration.
These are the A-Gays. They’re (mostly) out, they’re proud (to work for President Trump) and they have big jobs inside (or alongside) this administration. They wield influence all over town, from the Pentagon to the State Department to the White House to the Kennedy Center.
“We’re like Visa,” Mr. Moran said. “Everywhere you want to be.”
He sipped a dirty vodka martini and surveyed the room. Two Republican men waved at him from across the club. “Both gay,” he explained. This was also true of the middle-aged Trump appointee who ambled over a moment later to catch up. But apparently not so of the young-looking White House aide who approached a few minutes after that. “Straight as an arrow,” Mr. Moran said as the aide walked away.
He laughed and added, “I hang out with my straights just as easily as I hang out with my gays.”
Charles Moran, 44, a high-ranking official at the Department of Energy and the unofficial gatekeeper of the new Republican gay scene in Washington.Credit…Jason Andrew for The New York Times
The most powerful out gay man in the Trump administration is Mr. Bessent. There are a handful of others in the Treasury Department. Other A-Gays include Tony Fabrizio, the president’s longtime pollster; Trent Morse, an outgoing deputy assistant to the president; Richard Grenell, who was put in charge of the Kennedy Center; and Jacob Helberg, an under secretary of state. These are just some. There are lots of other lesser-known men who make up the tribe.
Bessent is a great example of the gay men of the Trump administration. 99% of people have no idea he is gay, even though it is hardly a secret. That’s because Bessant is known as Secretary of the Treasury, not a flamboyant gay man who prances around in dresses and gets his rocks off in a Senate committee room, as Democratic Party gays do.
“America’s technocratic elite might be even dumber.”
~@DavidPGoldmanExhibit A: Our technocrats “Admiral” Rachel Levine and nuclear engineer Sam Brinton.
“An Officer and a Gentlemen walk into the French Embassy…” pic.twitter.com/PzWVHbdW86
— Dan Schwartz (@Dan_Schwartz) November 20, 2024
The difference is important. The “Queer” movement is about rejecting the norms of society in every way possible. If you go to a Pride parade, is it all about flaunting your sexuality and rejecting the bourgeoisie. The Trump tribe is about American greatness; the Biden tribe was all about how awful “normie” Americans are.
In 2015, back when the Republican establishment was still trying to thwart Mr. Trump, Mr. Moran said that he and some other gay Republicans he knew became intrigued by the brash New Yorker’s history of saying nice things about gay rights. These men had experienced homophobia from their fellow Republicans at one point or another, so they saw Mr. Trump’s ascendance as something new, especially after the 2016 Republican National Convention, when Peter Thiel was given a prime-time speaking slot and used it to endorse Mr. Trump, saying: “I am proud to be gay. I am proud to be a Republican. But most of all I am proud to be an American.”
Mr. Moran was in the front row when that happened. He recalled bracing for boos or a walkout. Instead there was big applause. He ended up helping out on all three of Mr. Trump’s campaigns. Along the way, he met the various members of the Trump family, all of whom treated him with a respect that couldn’t always be expected from Republican power brokers of the past, he said.
The conservative repulsion to gay culture, at least in recent times, has been focused more on the culture than the sexual preference that is associated with it. That’s why it is no contradiction that Trump is openly hostile to alphabet ideology while having no problem with individual gay people.
A lot of gay people don’t understand the distinction, because being ‘gay” is a complete identity to them, not one part of a personality that in itself is not defining.
Before his political turn, Mr. Trump mostly talked publicly about gay people the way one might expect of a New Yorker in show business. He once asked a contestant on “The Apprentice” if he was “a homosexual.” When the man said that he was, Mr. Trump replied: “I like steak, somebody else likes spaghetti. That’s why they have menus in restaurants. It’s a great world.”
Mr. Trump, with the first lady, Melania Trump, at the Kennedy Center for the premiere of “Les Misérables.” The A-Gays consider Mrs. Trump iconic, both for her fashion and her attitude.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
He allowed gay people to join Mar-a-Lago when other clubs in Palm Beach still discriminated. One associate of his said that in the period when Mr. Trump was preparing to become a presidential candidate, he privately explained his thinking on gay-related policy issues, such as marriage equality, this way: “I love the gays. They pay the most for the weddings.”
Washington is awash in gay people–perhaps the gayest city in the world–and the identitarian gays hate the MAGA gays because they don’t get how you can be gay and Republican. MAGA gays, on the other hand, just shrug. And when they encounter hostility from socially conservative Republicans, they shrug as well–they get more grief from gay liberals than from socially conservative Republicans. Even Republicans who dislike homosexuality tend not to make it the defining aspect of their lives.
“The gay left just can’t handle the fact that President Trump loves the gays,” said Casey Flores, a 34-year-old MAGA gay who moved to Washington in April and started a job at the Kennedy Center as a fund-raiser.
“This idea that Republicans hate gays, that’s just so not the case, as clearly evidenced by all of us,” Mr. Flores said, referring to all of his gay friends who moved to Washington to work for Mr. Trump. “We’re so over it. We just want to help the country.”
As a Catholic, I believe that homosexual relationships are sinful, but I also believe that it is not evil. It is sinful in the way that people are often sinful, for which God forgives us. Sexual sins are the most common kind of sins and as common as eyelashes on people. When I go to confession, the priest has a stack of pamphlets about how to struggle with porn addiction, which is so common.
What makes alphabet ideology so repulsive is not its connection with homosexuality, but that it is about forcing others to adjust to one’s private life and imposing a set of values incompatible with raising a family on everyone. If “Rachel” Levine wants to wear a dress, I really don’t care. If “she” wants to trans children, then we are at war. It is no longer a private matter, but an assault on reality and on other people.
MAGA homosexuals don’t want to force everybody into a “Queer” mold. They are here to make society better for everybody, not just themselves. That’s how you get a Scott Pressler, who did as much as anybody to deliver Pennsylvania to Trump as anybody. He is beloved by MAGA because he wants the same thing we do: to Make America Great Again.
Shouldn’t we all want that instead of chopping the genitals off of children?
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