When alt-right YouTuber Charlie Kirk was assassinated during a speaking event at Utah Valley University on September 10, Make America Great Again (MAGA) politicians, conservative influencers and President Donald Trump himself leapt to immediately frame the shooter as trans, based on rumours that ammunition was engraved with “transgender and anti-fascist ideology,” a claim amplified across MAGA-aligned media despite law enforcement caution that such early information was unverified. 

Contrast that with the June assassination of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman, which failed to gain as much press coverage from the GOP or the Democrats. While Kirk is getting flags flown at half-mast, Democratic Hortman’s death received no such attention.

There is now an obvious pattern: in late August 2025, the tragic Minneapolis church shooting became yet another political flashpoint in an already crowded news roster of politically motivated shootings. Despite few confirmed facts, right-wing figures like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene seized on the shooter’s supposed trans identity to post on X, “If they [trans people] are willing to destroy themselves and how God made them, then they are willing to destroy others.” Far-right provocateurs like Laura Loomer called for banning trans children from schools. President Trump declared that the Department of Justice would look into banning trans persons from owning guns, a move which unexpectedly rallied the National Rifle Association (NRA) to defend trans gun ownership rights. 

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey condemned hatred being directed at “our transgender community” despite calls for trans exclusion from some of America’s most powerful politicians. 

But one key fact is always ignored: Trans individuals account for only about 0.1% of mass shooters, a statistically negligible fraction.

Why then is the claim that trans people are exceptionally violent and a threat to social order so pernicious under MAGA that narratives of “trans violence” can grow and spread so quickly? 

The answer is simple and requires a return to an old MAGA favorite: the trans strawman.

What is the trans strawman?

A strawman fallacy is a common rhetorical tactic. In short, it is a purposeful  misrepresentation of your  opponent’s position, turning their claims into weaker, distorted versions that are easier to attack. Instead of engaging with the real argument, they argue against this made-up “strawman.” A strawman is not about persuasion through reason or evidence. It is about creating a caricature of an opponent that never existed, then claiming victory after tearing it down. 

Strawmen give the illusion of argumentative victory while sidestepping the harder work of grappling with facts, nuance and the lived realities of the people being discussed.

In MAGA’s narrative, “transness” is malleable: it opportunistically becomes whatever fits the moment. For example, trans people are simultaneously portrayed by MAGA as:

• Innocent, gullible children in need of urgent adult guidance.
• Devious manipulators infiltrating politics, schools and even airlines.
• Weak, un-American pacifists.
• Predatory “Nihilistic Violent Extremists”, even though trans Americans are over four times more likely than cisgender people to be the victims of violent crime, and there is not a single trans person identified in the ongoing Epstein files releases.

These portrayals are contradictory and illogical. Transness has become Schrödinger’s scapegoat: alternatively weak or dangerous when convenient. Meanwhile, the famous faces of the American right continue to get their own form of gender-affirming care via enacting the aesthetics of the “Mar-a-Lago face.” 

To MAGA, the contradictions and hypocrisy do not matter. What matters is that “trans” becomes a floating scapegoat, easily refashioned to fit whatever social evil the right needs to demonize at the moment.

Why transness works as a scapegoat

Because the American trans population is numerically small and marginalized, they make an easy target. A recent analysis by the University of California, Los Angeles’s (UCLA) Williams Institute reveals that over 2.8 million people in the United States, including approximately 724,000 youth aged 13–17, identify as transgender. That corresponds to roughly 1% of Americans aged thirteen and older: 0.8% of adults and 3.3% of teenagers. These individuals also endure disproportionately high levels of poverty, discrimination and barriers to health care.

In short, trans people are numerically small, politically underrepresented and socially marginalized, making them the perfect scapegoat: comparatively fewer Americans know an openly trans person, and systemic marginalization makes collective resistance difficult under capitalism. 

The real costs

Meanwhile, real trans lives are being dismantled. Policies banning gender-affirming care, erasing trans identities in federal documents and excluding trans youth from sports are sweeping the Anglosphere, from Alberta across London and to Texas — all while playing on this same baseless strawman of a “trans threat.”

Trans individuals are not just enduring constant legislative attacks: they face very real violence. The US Transgender Survey, the largest of its kind, documents alarming levels of sexual assault, systemic discrimination and economic hardship. These are not abstract numbers — they reflect daily realities of health care denial, workplace discrimination and threats to physical safety.

Meanwhile, the same right that weaponizes “trans identity” also ignores the epidemic of violence carried out by cisgender men radicalized by far-right extremism, which has been named the most common ideological motivator behind US domestic terrorism these past few years.

What does the trans strawman say about us?

This is not just a worrying narrative for trans rights. It is also telling how modern far-right politics are increasingly targeting any group perceived as “other,” building on a long history of scapegoating vulnerable groups. Today, it is trans people; tomorrow, it could also be any other marginalized community. Whichever group is politically convenient to blame because they cannot fight back: materially, politically or culturally. MAGA’s “trans strawman” is not just fundamentally wrong; it is democratically dangerous. It normalizes identity-based scapegoating and ignores facts during a time of already exigent political crisis

If we accept the transstrawman narrative, we choose fear and fiction over empathy and facts. We let a small, vulnerable population bear the blame for societal ills they did not create. We let the true threats to democracy: violent masculinity, economic inequality, disinformation and far-right radicalization, go unaddressed. 

The provocation

So, here is the challenge: dismantle the strawman. Push back. Demand facts. Resist fear. Trans people are real, flesh-and-blood humans, not convenient political symbols or caricatures. And you might even know someone who is trans who is unable to come out due to fear and threats this might engender.

Meanwhile, the number of trans people who were murdered in the US nearly doubled between 2017 and 2021, most of them trans women of color. Each death is a reminder: rhetoric is not just words. When lies about “predatory” and “violent” trans people circulate unchecked, they pave the way for real bloodshed.

The lives and rights of the trans community matter. And America deserves a politics grounded in reality, not projection, because protecting trans lives means protecting democracy itself.

[Kaitlyn Diana edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.