Donald Trump is considering anti-LGBTQ+ extremist Greg Abbott for vice president

Donald Trump said that he is considering picking the extremely anti-LGBTQ+ governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, as his running mate.

Trump was asked about the possibility that Abbott would be his running mate on Fox News, and Trump said he is “a spectacular man.”

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“From the moment you start to put on your eyelashes and transform yourself, it’s political,” says the Drag Out the Vote activist.

“And he’s done a great job,” Trump said. “Yeah, certainly he would be somebody that I would very much consider.”

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“So he’s on the list?” Fox host Sean Hannity pressed.

“Absolutely, he is,” Trump said. Trump added that Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) is also on the shortlist.

Earlier this year, Abbott used an emergency order to take control of a public in Eagle Pass, Texas, a border town, and stopped Border Patrol from using a boat ramp in that park. Abbott set up a fence around that park to keep residents out, and he was called out by the local government.

Trump met with Abbott in that park this week and praised Abbott for his challenges to federal border security authority.

“He really stepped it up,” Trump said of Abbott. “It’s been amazing.”

Abbott has a long history of anti-LGBTQ+ actions, and there is currently a petition to have the U.N. investigate Texas for possible anti-LGBTQ+ human rights violations.

Abbott attempted to classify gender-affirming care as a form of child abuse so that the state could take trans children away from their parents if their parents affirmed their identities. The state supreme court has stopped the implementation of that order for many trans-supportive families that were being investigated.

During his tenure as governor, the state has banned doctors from providing gender-affirming care to transgender minors, despite how such care is supported by major medical associations in the U.S. Trans students are also not allowed to participate in school sports as their gender in the state. The state government has gone so far as to demand private medical records of trans teens.

Abbott signed a drag ban last June. The law banned “sexually explicit” drag performances of all types – specifically naming “lip syncs” where a male performer is dressed “as a female” and vice versa as a type of drag performance included in the ban – in front of children. Abbott’s lieutenant governor called drag a “scourge facing our state.” By September, a judge ruled the law unconstitutional.

Texas sued the Biden administration in 2021 over federal guidance allowing trans people to use the restroom at work and aimed at reducing harassment of transgender people in the workplace.

In 2019, Abbott signed the state’s famous “Save Chick-fil-A” bill into law, which said that state and local governments aren’t allowed to take “adverse actions” against businesses because of the businesses’ “religious beliefs” or “moral convictions,” even if those beliefs lead the businesses to break the law. He surrounded himself with Chick-fil-A food as he signed the law. Chick-fil-A gained popularity on the right when, in 2012, the company’s CEO, Dan Cathy, made several anti-LGBTQ+ comments.