Donald Trump and Mike Pence are to speak at a conservative conference alongside a sheriff who called transgender people “freaks”.

The Republican President and VP are both set to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference this week, which has already made the news by dropping controversial far-right figurehead Milo Yiannopoulos.

However, there are still plenty of shockingly homophobic figures set to speak alongside the leaders, with the closing address on Saturday set to be delivered by David Clarke, the Sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin.

Speaking on his show on TheBlaze Radio Network earlier this year, Clarke claimed that discussions about gun control after the Orlando Massacre were a “distraction”.

He said: “Folks, we took the cheese. It refers to a mouse trap, with a nice big chunk of cheese on it. You know what’s going to happen if that mouse touches the cheese.

“That’s precisely what we did following the Orlando terror massacre. We allowed the left to use gun control as a shiny object to distract us from Mrs Bill Clinton’s flaws.

“We were hammering her over Benghazi, and what the left do is exploit these distractions, something came up, a shiny object… they know they can bury us in this thing that isn’t going to change anything.

“Don’t take the cheese! We spent a whole week taking about what they wanted us to talk about… it got us off of the momentum about the Clinton e-mail scandal.”

Clarke added: “We could have talked about a lot of things around Orlando, the failure of Barack Obama… we missed that opportunity. When the Democrats throw a shiny object out there, we need to take that and turn it into tying it around the neck of Mrs Bill Clinton.”

In the same podcast he attacked the “freakish lifestyle” of transgender people, claiming they have mental disorders.

He fumed: “Folks, more evidence that transgender persons suffer from mental disorders more than physiological disorders.

“Too often in this assault on the First Amendment, and this very totalitarian attitude from the left that any freakish lifestyle is now considered part of the norm, and they’re shoving it down our throats.

“If you’re not careful when you engage in this conversation, they’ll look for the trap, and they’ll catch you saying something that’s clumsy or not well articulated, and then they’ll just attack you with it… Transgender-phobic and all this other nonsense.”

Clarke continued to read an article from anti-trans activist Walt Heyer, who Business Insider reports has called for parents of transgender children to be jailed. The article refers to accepting transgender people as “madness”.

The sheriff claimed: “The left is on a political crusade with this, looking to push any lifestyle as mainstream because they seek their vote. I think this is cruel, I think it’s disgusting.

“We need to push back on this.”

Clarke previously made the shortlist for Trump’s Cabinet picks, but was ultimately passed over despite a private meeting with the leader in Trump tower.