McBride shifts blame for trans backlash to ‘well-funded’ right-wing effort

Rep. Sarah McBride, D-Del., appeared to switch gears as to who’s to blame for pushback against transgender issues, saying it stems from a “well-funded” and “well-coordinated, right-wing effort” on Monday.

Katie Couric spoke to the transgender lawmaker on her show “Next Question with Katie Couric” about rollbacks on transgender policies, such as barring biologically male athletes from competing in women’s sports and prohibiting gender transition treatments for children. 

Couric asked McBride whether the “pendulums maybe swung too far” and caused backlash against trans Americans.

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“I don’t think the pendulum swung too far,” McBride answered. “I think more than anything else, the reason why this has happened is because there was a well-funded, well-coordinated effort to fearmonger and scapegoat around a vulnerable community.”

McBride said that while transgender individuals were gaining visibility, it was not matched by a “level of public understanding” that would have prevented backlash. Right-wing actors took advantage of that vulnerability to “demonize” the entire community, McBride claimed.

“It’s just sort of the reality of new progress, right?” McBride said. “It’s always the most fragile at the start. And then that is met most explicitly by a well-funded, well-coordinated, right-wing effort to demonize, fearmonger, and scapegoat that community. It’s had toxic consequences.”

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This appeared to mark a shift in McBride’s earlier comments on the topic.

When asked by The New York Times’ Ezra Klein about where the Democratic Party went wrong in 2024, McBride acknowledged that the party may have overplayed its hand regarding trans issues.

“I think that’s an accurate reflection of the overplaying of the hand in some ways — that we as a coalition went to Trans 201, Trans 301, when people were still at a very much Trans 101 stage,” McBride said in June.

McBride added, “And I think some of the cultural mores and norms that started to develop around inclusion of trans people were probably premature for a lot of people. We became absolutist — not just on trans rights but across the progressive movement — and we forgot that in a democracy we have to grapple with where the public authentically is and actually engage with it. Part of this is fostered by social media.”

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Though McBride placed more blame on the right for the backlash, the Delaware Democrat continued to argue against “absolutism” for both sides and encouraged the party to keep educating voters on the issues.

[O]ne of the things that I take solace in is the fact that absolutism, whether on the left or the right, is only possible in authoritarianism. The fact that change takes time, as unfair as that is and as unsatisfying as that is, we can try to make it as fast as possible, and we must make it as fast as possible. But the fact that it’s hard, that is a feature of democracy, not a bug of it,” McBride told Couric.

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Fox News Digital reached out to McBride’s office for comment.