It's difficult to convince people you aren't a fan of Donald Trump when you're working with his former campaign manager, but Caitlyn Jenner wants you to know she didn't vote for Trump in the 2020 election. And no, it wasn't because Trump disregarded leading experts and scientists during a global pandemic, emboldened white supremacists, and made over 30,000 false or misleading claims during his presidency. She was just busy… golfing, I guess. Sound familiar?
In a CNN interview on Monday, correspondent Dana Bash mentioned that some Californians might not support Jenner's gubernatorial run because they view her as "Trumpy." Jenner took the opportunity to set the record straight: "I didn't even vote. Out here in California it's like, why vote for a Republican president? It's just not going to work," said the registered Republican who is currently running for office in California. "It was voting day and I thought, the only thing out here in California that affects people is the propositions that were out there, and I didn't see any propositions that I really had one side or the other."
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This is why, she added, "I just wound up going to play golf, and I said, 'I'm not doing that.'" If she's trying to distance herself from Trump, I'm not sure this is the best technique: Trump was infamously mocked for golfing instead of working on many, many occasions, including that time the White House promised he was "working tirelessly" during the holidays to secure COVID-19 relief.
Jenner also opened up about some of her political positions, telling Bash that she supports "legal immigration," but believes "the bad ones have to leave." She clarified that she is "kind of on the Republican side," but also emphasized that she isn't into labels. "When it comes to social issues, I'm much more progressive, much more liberal," Jenner said. "So I'm kind of middle of the road."
It's hard to say in what way, exactly, Jenner could be labeled a progressive. During the same interview, she said she was in favor of the death penalty, and also took the chance to reiterate that she's "about protecting women's sports," meaning "biological boys" shouldn't play on women's teams. Jenner was first criticized last week for telling a TMZ reporter that it "isn't fair" to cis girls for transgender girls to play on sports teams at school.
This is a very clear Republican talking point, with many members of the party stepping over each other to argue that trans girls have a "biological advantage" due to testosterone levels. This isn't true — as Stanford University School of Medicine fellow Jack Turban wrote in the Scientific American, trans girls on puberty blockers have insignificant testosterone levels, and a sizeable number of cis girls also have high testosterone levels — but aside from that, many people online pointed out that Jenner is, once again, being a hypocrite. Jenner, who is also a trans woman, competes in women's golf tournaments.
There's a lot of irony, hypocrisy, and contradiction at play here, but to sum it up, does Caitlyn Jenner want Californians to just go play golf instead of voting for her? Because that's what I'm hearing.