President Donald Trump has claimed he'll be in trouble with wife and First Lady, Melania Trump, after impersonating a transgender athlete.
The president was addressing the audience at a commencement ceremony at the University of Alabama on Thursday (May 1).
While discussing transgender athletes taking part in weightlifting contests, Trump said he would be in trouble with Melania, who called his impressions 'not very presidential'.
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“The greatest is like weightlifting, you ever see the weightlifting? Where they have a record that wasn’t broken in 18 years,” he said.
"Should I imitate... my wife gets very upset when I do this... she said 'darling it's not presidential' yeah but people like it.
"Should I do it or not? Alright I'm in trouble when I get home but I've been in lots of trouble before."
Trump then spoke about a scenario in which two athletes are competing in a weight lifting contest.
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The president does an impression of the female athlete, who - in his example - struggles to lift the weights.
However, a 'transitioned person' then follows next, and is able to lift the weights and 'break the record'.
"A guy comes along, or a gal, or whatever, a transitioned person... and he was a failed weight lifter as a man... and breaks the record... that's not right," said Trump.
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Earlier this week, the Trump administration claimed that the University of Pennsylvania violated federal civil rights laws by allowing transgender athletes to compete.
The university was given 10 days to 'voluntarily resolve these violations or risk a referral to the US Department of Justice (DOJ) for enforcement proceedings'.
“Little girls who look up to Riley Gaines and Paula Scanlan can find hope in today’s action — the Trump Administration will not allow male athletes to invade female private spaces or compete in female categories,” said Craig Trainor, the Education Department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights.
“UPenn has a choice to make: do the right thing for its female students and come into full compliance with Title IX immediately or continue to advance an extremist political project that violates federal antidiscrimination law and puts UPenn’s federal funding at risk."
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Just hours after Trump returned to the White House for a second term as president back in January, he signed an executive order recognizing male and female as the only two sexes.
The order states: "Invalidating the true and biological category of 'woman' improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept."
Topics: Donald Trump, Melania Trump, Politics, US News, LGBTQ, Transgender
Lucy Devine