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On Sunday’s Inside Politics on CNN, host Manu Raju tried to undermine Congresswoman Nancy Mace (R-SC) taking a stand against men using women’s restrooms in the Capitol by wrongly claiming that her district has become substantially more Republican, thus suggesting that she has flip-flopped on transgender issues to pander to a more conservative district.

While Raju suggested that the district had gotten double digits more Republican in its voting patterns, the Almanac of American Politics reports that, after the district was redrawn in 2022, it voted a mere 1.4 percentage points more for Donald Trump in 2020 than it did under the old lines. DailyKos similarly found that Trump received 52.1 percent in 2020 under the old lines, but 53.5 percent the same year under the new lines.

Host Manu Raju began the segment by relating that transgender issues hurt Democrats in the 2024 elections, and that now Congresswoman Mace is pushing the issue in Congress as part of what Raju referred to as the Republican party’s “right flank.” Here’s Raju:

The culture wars have recently put Republicans on the defensive when it comes to the issue of abortion, but, this cycle, it was Democrats who were in an awkward spot as the GOP focused on turning transgender rights into a wedge issue. Kamala Harris largely ignored tens of millions of dollars in attacks from Donald Trump and his allies over transgender issues. And now the culture wars have reached Capitol Hill with Speaker Mike Johnson bowing to pressure from his right flank to ban transgender women from using women’s restrooms in the Capitol.

Notably, no ideological labels were applied to Democrats who have far-left views on transgender issues.

After the panel discussed how Democrats should have responded to Republicans during the campaign rather than ignore the issue, Raju got to Mace recently pushing for a ban on biological men in women’s restrooms at the Capitol in anticipation of Sarah McBride, the first transgender to be elected to Congress, who will represent Delaware as a Democrat.

The Washington Post‘s Leigh Ann Caldwell recalled that Mace has a history of speaking out in favor of LGBTQ rights since she was elected to Congress in 2020. Here’s Caldwell: “When you look further down in her Twitter feed, she was very pro-LGBTQ rights earlier on when she came to Congress over the past couple of years and said — wanted to expand the tent for the Republican party. And so this is a complete about-face for her.”

Complete about-face? The Left says no, Mace has “always been a transphobic extremist.“

Channeling a recurring talking point by liberals that Republicans do not actually care about transgender issues and just have ulterior motives in discussing them, Raju claimed that Mace’s district has become substantially more conservative, and then showed on screen misleading numbers that refer to the South Carolina Republican’s winning margins for each of her three elections since 2020 which shows her numbers getting higher: “You know, her district has got more conservative, too. I mean, this is — from 2020, she had a — she was up — it was the GOP had about a 1.2 percent advantage there. Now, it’s gotten much more conservative — 16.6 percent — sort of tracks the evolution on this issue.”

But it is fairly commonplace for incumbents to get reelected by greater margins the longer they stay in Congress as they run against weaker candidates such that an incumbent may substantially outperform the partisan lean of the district. In fact, her first election in 2020 was especially close because her Democrat opponent Joe Cunningham was the incumbent.

The CNN host went on to suggest that the transgender ads used by the Trump campaign might be remembered similarly to the Willie Horton ads that were used against Democrat Michael Dukakis in 1988, in that there was “a tactical decision by the Democrats not to respond.”

Caldwell dismissively emphasized that transgender issues only effect a small percentage of people — as if a man coming into a restroom with 12 women in it only matters to the man, and not the women. 

Transcript follows:

CNN’s Inside Politics

November 24, 2024

8:42 a.m. Eastern

MANU RAJU, HOST: The culture wars have recently put Republicans on the defensive when it comes to the issue of abortion, but, this cycle, it was Democrats who were in an awkward spot as the GOP focused on turning transgender rights into a wedge issue. Kamala Harris largely ignored tens of millions of dollars in attacks from Donald Trump and his allies over transgender issues. And now the culture wars have reached Capitol Hill with Speaker Mike Johnson bowing to pressure from his right flank to ban transgender women from using women’s restrooms in the Capitol. That includes incoming freshman Democrat Sarah McBride — the first openly trans member. Democrats now are trying to find the right way to respond.

CONGRESSWOMAN ALEXANDRIA OCASIO CORTEZ (D-NY): Everybody, no matter how you feel on this issue, should reject it completely. What are they doing? They’re doing this so Nancy Mace can make a buck and send a text and fundraise off an email. They’re not doing this to protect people.

CONGRESSMAN MARK POCAN (D-WI): I think we’re doing what we need to, but you notice we don’t bring these issues up. It’s the Republicans do. They’re always looking for diversions because they can’t govern. Look, pass a farm bill — pass the appropriation bills — do your job and let people use the bathroom they’re going to use. 

CONGRESSMAN SEAN CASTEN (D-IL): If your goal is to spread hatred and fear in the world, okay, fine. But it is beneath the dignity of this institution — it’s beneath the dignity of a decent, moral human being.

RAJU: Of course Republicans look at the numbers of money that was spent on this issue between July and November in this election cycle — $59.4 million on issues involving transgender rights — in particular, 11.6 percent on those ads. Zolan, what do Democrats have to do to respond here gong forward?

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, NEW YORK TIMES WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, I mean, one, you start by responding, right? I mean —

RAJU: Harris didn’t do that at all.

KANNO-YOUNGS: — (audio gap) … throughout the presidential campaign. I mean, it was very easy. If you were tuning in on Sunday and watching football — if you were watching TV just any day, you’d be inundated with anti-trans ads, you know, from Republicans and from the Trump campaign. And, you know, I think the response really — I mean, it reminds me of that old adage — if you have, if you create a void of information, somebody’s going to fill it. And Republicans, through the money that they invested, were able to dictate the argument on this issue. You know, I don’t exactly know what the right response would be here, but I know that there was a void that was created. And, look, you know, often we talk about this in political terms as a political debate. There is a community that’s caught in the middle —

RAJU: Yeah.

KANNO-YOUNGS: — here as well that is probably really scared right now.

RAJU: And speaking of — and speaking of the Trevor Project — which is a nonprofit that focuses on suicide prevention and crisis intervention for LGBTQ+ young people — they said that crisis service contacts are up nearly 700 percent on November 6. I mean, this all comes, of course, as Sarah McBride — who is the first openly trans member to join Congress next year as a member from Delaware, responded to all of this saying that, “I’m not here to fight about bathrooms. I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families.” She’s in a complicated position because people want her to be the person fighting back on these positions, but she does not want to be.

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL, WASHINGTON POST: Yeah, and that’s where Democrats — it’s interesting they had — some Democrats had a press conference earlier this week, and they said, you know, I pushed him to say, “Where are you going to work with the President-elect?” And they said, “On issues that matter to people.” When it comes to cultural issues, they’re going to fight back because that’s what they’re waging right now is a culture war. We’ll see how they do that, but with Representative Nancy Mace who kind of led this charge — a Republican of South Carolina. She used to be from a swing district — it’s a little more red now. But she, you know, tweeted hundreds of times about this issue —

RAJU: More than 300 times about this issue.

CALDWELL: Thank you.

RAJU: And if I just show it on your screen there and finish your thought. Just look at the amount of tweets just over the past week on this from Nancy Mace. But continue.

CALDWELL: Yeah, she is someone — she got a lot of attention this week about it. When you look further down in her Twitter feed, she was very pro-LGBTQ rights earlier on when she came to Congress over the past couple of years and said — wanted to expand the tent for the Republican party. And so this is a complete about face for her.

RAJU: Speaking of which, this is what she said in 2021. She said, “I strongly support LGBTQ rights. No one should be discriminated against. Religious liberty, gay rights and transgender equality can all coexist.” That was from that. You know, her district has got more conservative, too. I mean, this is — from 2020, she had a — she was up — it was the GOP had about a 1.2 percent advantage there. Now, it’s gotten much more conservative — 16.6 percent — sort of tracks the evolution on this issue.

CARL HULSE, NEW YORK TIMES: Standards are evolving, right? John Cornyn said. I do think that Democrats really have to figure out a way to answer this, though, because Republicans repeatedly told me as I was covering Senate race that this was a difference maker for them. You heard Sherrod Brown say it, too. And so they need to figure this out.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And I was told by the Trump campaign at the time that they tested out this ad, and, when they saw that there was no response from Democrats, that’s when they poured millions of dollars behind it because they realized that they had stepped into something which fills a complete void on the other side, and that the silence was actually giving them more fuel when it came to this argument.

RAJU: I mean, that’s a tactical decision by the Democrats not to respond. Ultimately, when this campaign is written, perhaps that will be one thing we’ll look back kind of like the Willie Horton ad back in Michael Dukakis.

CALDWELL: Yeah, but it’s also — we’re going to remember — we’re going to remember that this impacts such a very small percentage of people. And the fact that it has been blown up as if this is a major, major cultural issue. I mean, it’s just, you know, putting it in context is important.