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Is it possible to drink your own Kool-Aid? If so, then Donald Trump's lips were positively blue during a Tuesday address to the United Nations.
In the 30-minute speech, Trump touched upon many of his greatest hits -- illegal immigration and imbalanced trade policies -- while also laying out his "America First" vision on a global stage. The president called for "sovereign and independent nations [to] protect their citizens, respect their neighbors and honor the differences that make each country special and unique."
"The future does not belong to globalists," he said. "The future belongs to patriots."
The speech -- his third to the U.N. -- also inverted Hillary Clinton's famous "gay rights are human rights" declaration from 2011. Trump claimed his vision of an anti-globalist world includes "the right of all people to live in dignity," highlighting the administration's campaign to decriminalize homosexuality in the more than 70 countries where same-sex activity remains illegal.
"For this reason, my administration is working with other nations to stop criminalizing homosexuality," he said, "and we stand in solidarity with [LGBTQ+] people who live in countries that punish, jail, or execute individuals based upon sexual orientation."
The brief comments harken back to a pledge that's now ancient by the standards of the Trump administration. While campaigning for the White House in 2016, the president pledged to be a "real friend" to the LGBTQ+ community in the Oval Office. He also held a rainbow Pride flag reading "LGBTs for Trump" upside down onstage in a misbegotten attempt at allyship.
But even as the president has reneged on that promise -- attacking the LGBTQ+ community 126 times since 2017 -- Trump has continued to credit himself with a job well done. Earlier this year, he invented a fake award from the Log Cabin Republicans to honor his alleged allyship.
As Out previously reported, that award does not exist. Meanwhile, several members of the gay GOP group resigned in protest after it endorsed his reelection campaign in a Washington Post op-ed.
When it comes to the president's campaign to decriminalize homosexuality, Trump wasn't even aware of it earlier this year. When a reporter asked about the push during a Q&A in the Oval Office, the POTUS responded, "I don't know which report you're talking about -- we have many reports."
After the Trump administration announced the decriminalization campaign in February, this publication pointed out that it's actually an old racist tactic. The majority of countries where same-sex relations continue to be illegal are former colonized nations in the Middle East and Africa, where anti-LGBTQ+ sodomy laws were inherited through centuries-old criminal codes.
In keeping with the administration's brand, the majority of those countries are nonwhite.
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