Penn LGBT Center Grapples With Gay Alumnus Donald Trump’s Complicated Legacy
Photo by Gage Skidmore / CC Public Domain Mark 1.0
January 19, 2021 at 9:13 pm
With only a few days left in office, the Trump administration has left historic levels of political and social dysfunction in its wake. Though many search for meaning amid the Trump administration's penultimate days of turbulence, the implications of this presidency will continue to reverberate for years to come.
No group on Penn’s campus is more embroiled in this debate than its LGTBQ students. Regardless of one’s personal feelings, no one can deny that President Donald Trump was the United States’ first queer president.
An unparalleled aesthete, catty bitch, and gossip, Trump brought his gay flavor to the decidedly heterosexual logic of American politics. Trump taking time out of his day to comment on the fashion choices of female politicians was queerpolitik par excellence. As Rico Hernandez (C’ 23) frames it, “Trump symbolized both victory and defeat for queer Americans.”