Trump declares Election Day ‘Christian Visibility Day’ as he continues attack on Biden’s trans Easter message

Republican presidential candidate panders to evangelicals by stoking spurious outrage against Joe Biden after long-established Trans Visibility Day happens to coincide with Easter Sunday

Donald Trump has promised his Christian followers that election day on 5 November will serve as “Christian Visibility Day”, predicting it will be an occasion “when Christians turn out in numbers that nobody has ever seen before” to vote him back into the White House.

The Republican presidential contender was speaking at a rally at the Hyatt Regency in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Tuesday evening when he made the remark, an allusion to the spurious outrage among Republicans caused by Trans Visibility Day happening to coincide with Easter Sunday this year.

Properly known as International Transgender Day of Visibility but often shortened to Trans Visibility Day, the date to recognise members of America’s transgender community was founded by Michigan-based activist Rachel Crandall in 2009 and has taken place on 31 March every year since.

In 2024, due to a quirk caused by the spring equinox, Easter Sunday fell on the same date. The coincidence was embraced by President Joe Biden, who said on Good Friday: “On Transgender Day of Visibility, we honour the extraordinary courage and contributions of transgender Americans and reaffirm our nation’s commitment to forming a more perfect union – where all people are created equal and treated equally throughout their lives.

“I am proud that my administration has stood for justice from the start, working to ensure that the LGBTQI+ community can live openly, in safety, with dignity and respect.”

The president’s gesture led Mr Trump’s campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt to falsely accuse him of “formally proclaiming” the national day, actually celebrating its 15th anniversary, over the Easter weekend as a calculated insult to Christians, despite Mr Biden himself being a devout Roman Catholic and churchgoer with nothing to gain from doing so.

“It is appalling and insulting that Joe Biden’s White House... formally proclaimed Easter Sunday as ‘Trans Day of Visibility’,” she said.

“We call on Joe Biden’s failing campaign and White House to issue an apology to the millions of Catholics and Christians across America who believe tomorrow is for one celebration only – the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

Her nonsensical and disingenuous attack on Mr Biden was echoed on social media by prominent Trump supporters, including Republican senators Mike Lee and JD Vance, and picked up again by Mr Trump himself in Wisconsin, who insisted the coincidence showed “such total disrespect to Christians”.

The Republican has recently been ramping up his efforts to secure the support of the evangelical community, even stooping to selling a “patriotic” edition of the Bible, which saw him justly ridiculed by the late-night hosts and on Saturday Night Live for his audacious hypocrisy.

Mr Trump’s return to the rally stage in Wisconsin, whose state primary he won later that evening, was otherwise dominated by his revival of vicious and decidedly un-Christian, anti-immigrant rhetoric.

“I’m here tonight to declare that Joe Biden’s border bloodbath – remember they used the name bloodbath, I was talking about something entirely different – but this is a border bloodbath ends the day I take the oath of office,” he told his supporters in Green Bay.

“With your vote, I will seal the border. I will stop the invasion. I will end the carnage, bloodshed and killing and we will crush the human traffickers.”

He also scaremongered about “illegal aliens” breaking into people’s homes and pledged to deport them.

Earlier in the afternoon, Mr Trump had also appeared in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where, flanked by law enforcement, he had raved that migrants had “wrecked our country” and referred to them as “animals”, warning that America could “cease to exist” if he loses at the ballot box in November.

He also used that engagement to shamelessly exploit the death of a young Michigan woman, Ruby Garcia, 25, who was murdered by Brandon Ortiz-Vite, a man from Mexico with whom she was romantically involved, to warn of a wave of “migrant crime” making America’s streets unsafe.