Richard Grenell, the gay former U.S. ambassador to Germany and former acting director of national intelligence under Trump, called on U.S. corporations to stop donating to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest LGBTQ rights and lobbying organization, tweeting, “Corporations who give money to Human Rights Campaign are supporting ugly partisanship.”
Grenell’s rage came in response to an HRC tweet accusing Grenell of using his sexual orientation as a shield to hide Trump’s anti-LGBTQ agenda.
Tweeted HRC: “Richard ‘Gaslight’ Grenell wants us to think that his mere presence on the stage will cancel out Trump’s blatant attacks on LGBTQ people. This came moments before homophobe Mike Pence took the stage. Shameful he’s using his LGBTQ identity as a shield for this president. #RNC2020.”
In February 2019, the Trump administration launched a global campaign to decriminalize homosexuality. The campaign was to be led by Grenell, who earlier this week said “President Trump is the most pro-gay president in American history. I can prove it” in a video released by the Log Cabin Republicans.
The Washington Post this week called Grenell’s claim “absurd.”
Wrote Glenn Kessler in a searing rebuttal (worth your time): “Grenell manages to both significantly mislead about Biden’s record and oversell Trump’s. Biden’s positions evolved over the years, but often he was ahead of the general public or other politicians in recognizing gay rights or seeking to thwart discrimination against gay people. Grenell pretends comments from a half-century ago are relevant today. As for Trump, the only items Grenell can cite in support of his supposedly pro-gay record concern Grenell’s own temporary appointment and a policy announced by Grenell that Trump apparently knew little about. (We’re still not sure why Iran policy gets mentioned as a pro-gay issue.) That’s pretty thin gruel on which to claim Trump is the most pro-gay president in history, especially when Trump has worked actively to undermine protections for the LGBT community that were enacted under Obama. Trump is pro-Grenell, but that doesn’t mean his administration is pro-gay. Grenell earns Four Pinocchios.”
And The Daily Beast wrote up a blistering piece this week about the Trump campaign to decriminalize homosexuality worldwide that Grenell was spearheading, noting that the whole thing was a complete fraud.
“LGBT human rights advocates and activists told The Daily Beast that the supposed program has almost nothing to show for its efforts—and in some countries has actually lost ground as its domestic policy agenda has undercut the push for equal treatment for queer people abroad. ‘Nothing more than a series of self-promoting Twitter photos,’ summed up Julie Dorf, a senior adviser at the Council for Global Equality, calling the campaign a ‘sham.’ … ‘I’m not aware of any major breakthroughs from Ric Grenell’s campaign to decriminalize homosexuality,’ said Jessica Stern, executive director of OutRight Action International. ‘The decriminalization campaign is smoke and mirrors,’ said Graeme Reid, director of the LGBT Rights Program at Human Rights Watch, who accused the Trump campaign of sidestepping the administration’s extensive record of hostility towards LGBTQ Americans by highlighting an initiative that functionally doesn’t exist.”
