Back on 26 July, Trump rambled off a prepared (but unexpected) trio of tweets about how transgender people would not be allowed to serve in the military. Apparently he’s given the Pentagon no further instruction, no policy guidelines about what to do regarding trans folk already serving, etc. The Pentagon, in turn, basically said they would keep on keeping on per current policy until something more definitive got passed on from the Commander-in-Chief.
Well today, three weeks later, Trump discussed the subject again, in unplanned remarks to the press. Definitive it was not.
“It’s been a very confusing issue for the military, and I think I’m doing the military a great favor,” Mr. Trump said during an impromptu news conference at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.
He declared that he has “great respect” for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and denied that his ban amounted to a betrayal after pledging to protect it during last year’s campaign. “I’ve had great support from that community,” Mr. Trump said. “I got a lot of votes.”
He said the military is “working on it now,” adding that “I think I’m doing a lot of people a favor by coming out and just saying it.”
Who, precisely, he’s doing a favor for, and what “it” specifically means, was not clarified by the President — and the Pentagon apparently still has no official guidance on the matter.
As to the military — well, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense certainly haven’t expressed any “confusion” over the issue, simply asking for time to work policies out as to how best to address and integrate trans soldiers into the service. Apparently all of them were blindsided by the initial tweets, and I don’t see anything in this update that’s likely to be helpful to them.