This Pride Month, Alyssa Farah Griffin is claiming former president Donald Trump would be waving a rainbow flag all over the place if he could. Griffin made a bold argument for the disgraced POTUS’ ally status on today’s episode of The View, where she said Trump made plenty of attempts to stand with the LGBTQ community during his presidency.
During a discussion about the unwarranted Republican outrage over the White House displaying a pride flag this June, Griffin said anyone upset by the gesture should look to Trump himself.
“With regard to the outrage over the pride flag being displayed at the White House, I have some unfortunate news for the MAGA crowd,” Griffin — who was once part of that very “MAGA crowd” as a Trump White House employee — told the panel.
“Donald Trump sells Pride merch on his website. He actually was going to light up the White House with the pride flag but opted not to ’cause it was during the George Floyd protests,” she continued. “He’s held a pride event. The first event he did after announcing his candidacy was speak to the Log Cabin Republicans, an LGBTQ+ Republican group. Not a defense of Donald Trump, just maybe talk to your king if you’ve got an issue with it.”
The George Floyd protests took place after Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who fatally placed a knee on the unarmed Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes. Floyd’s killing led to nationwide protests during the summer of 2020, which marked the fourth year of Trump’s presidency. While Griffin claims he had intentions to light up the White House in rainbow, it would have been Trump’s first time doing so since 2016.
As NBC News noted in 2020, Trump only acknowledged Pride Month once throughout the four years of his presidency. While he was the first Republican president to honor and acknowledge Pride, he did not issue an official presidential proclamation like President Barack Obama had done for eight years.
Trump completely ignored Pride Month in both 2017 and 2018, per NBC News. Unsurprisingly, he is trying to cash in on Pride now by selling themed t-shirts and hats on his website, as Griffin pointed out on today’s show.
The View airs weekdays at 11/10c on ABC.