Inside a Trump Ad Ridiculing Harris Over Taxpayer-Paid Gender Transition Surgery

Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign is running this 30-second ad on television stations in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin this week at a cost of $2.3 million, according to AdImpact.

The spot begins with a photo of Vice President Kamala Harris looking chagrined next to a headline that, citing a CNN report, declares that “Kamala supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners” — and that a narrator reads in a scornfully disbelieving tone. Ms. Harris is seen forcefully explaining her position in a 2019 interview with the director of the National Center for Transgender Equality.

The ad flashes to a photo of Ms. Harris, edited to look as if she is standing beside a bald, mustachioed person in a bright red dress and lipstick — apparently a onetime Energy Department official, Sam Brinton, who left the administration after being charged with luggage theft. Quotations from The New York Times, ABC News and PBS are shown to back up the narrator’s assertions, as is a questionnaire for the American Civil Liberties Union that Ms. Harris filled out as a candidate in 2019. In one frame, a photo of Ms. Harris wearing an admiring expression is shown alongside that of Rachel Levine, the first openly transgender person confirmed by the Senate to a federal position. Another photo, showing what look like orange-suited prisoners or detainees, is a publicity shot from the Netflix show “Orange Is the New Black.”

The ad ends with video of Ms. Harris alongside what appears to be a drag queen, before cutting to scenes of Mr. Trump, flanked by men and a woman in suits, greeting uniformed blue-collar workers and then showing off his signature to workers in hard hats.

“Kamala supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners.”

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