Donald Trump Jr. has made the outrageous and false claim that transgender people are more dangerous than terrorist groups.
Trump Jr. made the comment Thursday on The Megyn Kelly Show in the wake of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s shooting death — and on the anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. on September 11, 2001.
“I can’t name, including probably like al Qaeda and the Taliban, a group that is more violent per capita than the radical trans moment,” Trump Jr. said. The 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda, a terrorist group with a radical interpretation of Islam.
He said there may be more “mass killings” that are not known to the public “because you’re not allowed to talk about the truth.”
“I’m sure people are totally sane after jacking themselves up on hormones given to them by some rainbow hair freak doctor because they think men can somehow magically become women,” he said sarcastically. He also falsely claimed that violence and hate speech are coming only from the left.
In reality, the overwhelming majority of mass shooters are cisgender men — 95 percent of the perpetrators in shootings tracked since 1966 were male, according to the Rockefeller Institute of Government. And almost all have been cisgender.
“I’m aware of no evidence to support the claim that transgender people are disproportionately responsible for mass violence events in the U.S., including shootings in schools,” Michael Jensen, research director at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, recently told USA Today. “In fact, the data suggests quite the opposite.”
In 1,000 “mass casualty” plots identified by Jensen since 2023, “you can count on less than one hand how many of those were perpetrated by a transgender individual,” he said.
This isn’t the first time that Trump Jr. has falsely blamed trans people for violence. “It’s like the radical transgender movement is per capita the most violent domestic terror threat, if not in America, probably the entire world … because you have all these shooters and murderers or attempted murderers in such a tiny population,” Trump Jr. said in June, contrary to all available evidence.
The comment came after the shooting of two Minnesota legislators, one of whom died. And Trump Jr. made the assertion even though the suspect had made anti-trans statements.
Kelly leaned into the anti-trans narrative in another segment of the show, saying, “Charlie Kirk’s killer engraved the ammunition used to murder him with pro-transgender ideology, according to reporting in multiple outlets — to the surprise of literally no one.”
“There is one particular group that has been running around killing Americans in the name of transgender ideology lately, and it is transgender activists or individuals or those who proclaim that they are. That doesn’t mean they are all murderous, but there is a particularly high percentage committing crimes these days, and it is responsible and important to say so.”
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“You can’t say anything about the transgender thing because they are so unstable you might cause another one to do it, or because they’re in the protected category that cannot be criticized, or you’re a bigot,” she continued. “How many times has that word been used against me for speaking truth on radical gender ideology?”
She further contended that the left is the source of political violence, saying the ammunition included anti-fascist messages as well. “The ‘anti-fascist’ terminology is clearly a reference to Charlie’s support of President Donald Trump because that is what the left says about Trump,” she said.
However, the reporting on the engravings on the ammunition is unconfirmed. “A senior law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the investigation cautioned that the report had not been verified by [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] analysts, did not match other summaries of the evidence and might turn out to have been misread or misinterpreted,” The New York Times reports.
This article originally appeared on Advocate: After Charlie Kirk’s death, Trump Jr. falsely claims trans people more dangerous than al-Qaeda