Shannon Scott has a compelling story.

The transgender woman served her country valiantly, and as a veteran and LGBT activist she was invited to Thursday night’s CNN LGBT town hall, hosted by the left-wing activist group the Human Rights Campaign. She told former Vice President Joe Biden about her service and asked him what he would do about the Trump administration’s ban on transgender people serving in the military.

Transgender veteran Shannon Scott asks @JoeBiden how he will support trans people in the military.



"The fact of the matter is that trans men and women are in a position ... where they should be able to do anything anyone else can do." #TransMilitaryBan #EqualityTownHall — Lambda Legal (@LambdaLegal) October 11, 2019

Biden, unsurprisingly, blasted the Trump administration in no uncertain terms, condemning the transgender military ban vociferously. He’s not wrong: The ban is baseless and bigoted. However, Biden sure seems like a hypocrite on this issue.

After all, President Barack Obama first revoked the ban on transgender military service, which Trump re-instated, only in 2016. That means it was in place for about seven years under the Obama administration while Biden was vice president.

Was Obama a homophobe in 2012? Was Biden himself an anti-transgender bigot in 2014?

Supposedly, we’re supposed to believe Trump is an evil bigot for implementing a policy that an administration Biden was second-in-charge of enforced for almost all of his vice presidential tenure. The transgender ban is a bad, unfair policy, for sure. But the blame simply cannot be solely cast on Trump’s hands or Republicans, no matter how much Biden wants to run away from his own history.