Members of ACT UP protesting at Trump tower in 1989.

Due to his newfound ability to speak complete nonsense into history, Donald Trump has convinced a lot of extraordinarily stupid people that he is an LGBT-friendly politician. Hell, not just LGBT-friendly, you will find goons on the internet ready to argue he’s the bestest and mostest LGBT-friendly politician in American history because he said so. It surely can’t be based on anything he’s actually done, because since inauguration he’s barely done anything but play golf and roll back LGBT protections. And apparently he’s not even particularly good at golf.

However for decades, LGBT activists and advocates have known better. In the 1980s, Trump-owned properties were often gathering place for protests by HIV awareness group ACT UP. After dissolving into bitter sectarianism in the 90s and early 2000s, the activist group re-united specifically because of Trump’s inauguration. The Trump administration’s outright hostility and apathy towards HIV treatment has led to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS to hemorrhage staff, who have been more than happy to reveal what went on behind the curtain.

Thing is, with a little bit of digging, a really ugly picture of decades of weird hangups regarding HIV/AIDS in Trump’s history comes to light. Now here’s the part where some folks may try to say he’s just a germaphobe in general because he said so earlier this year. Even though he said exactly the opposite two years ago.

You know, if we are still bothering to take anything this clown ever says at face value. Anyway. Let’s roll things back a few decades, like this administration seems dedicated to doing.

Trump pretty much became the man he is now while under the wing of vicious lawyer, literal McCarthyite, and actual goddamn monster Roy Cohn. Cohn had a career of ruthless anti-communism and anti-LGBT activism that made him a darling of 1980s Republican politics. In a plot twist so heavy handed that it would make David Fincher step back incredulously, Cohn was outed as gay when he developed AIDS. The revelation destroyed his life completely before he died. Abandoned by everyone that had formerly respected him, he died penniless while desperately pursuing experimental treatment and making futile attempts to renounce his sexual orientation.

That’s a pretty awful way to go, even for a monster. Where was Trump during all this?

“Donald [Trump] pisses ice water,” Cohn used to say in the waning moments of his life. Upon the revelation of Cohn’s diagnosis, Trump dropped him as a lawyer and abandoned him as a friend. However, well after his death Trump decided to again refer to him as a friend in his book The Art Of The Deal. This theme of paranoid duplicitousness will show up several times in this article, as it does every day of this administration.

By 1991, Trump was requiring any potential dates to submit to an AIDS test before even going out to dinner. Not just any test, he specifically requested they go to his own personal doctor to be tested. I mean, we can agree that’s weird as hell right?

Trump himself certainly seemed to think so, because he made several bizarre performative stabs at pretending to be progressive about AIDS research. Like the time he showed up unannounced at an AIDS charity for a photo opportunity but then left without giving a donation. Or his completely bullshit claims that he paid for early 1990s AIDS victim Ryan White’s HIV treatment.

And even though this has been stated often, it really cannot be stated enough that Trump’s running mate for president Mike Pence oversaw a massive HIV outbreak in the state he governed that he offered no solution for but to pray away. Like, literally. On his own website, he expressed intention to use donations to the Ryan White HIV fund on pray-the-gay-away conversion therapy. The HIV outbreak was only resolved by treatment options available through the Affordable Care Act… you know, that thing he and Trump are trying to dismantle.

June 27th was National AIDS Testing Day, and despite a press release from the White House talking about prioritizing HIV treatment, Trump’s budget plan still proposes slashing $1.1 billion dollars from programs providing retroviral HIV-treatment drugs.

And this doesn’t even take into consideration the absolute goddamn disaster that will be the incoming Trumpcare fiasco.

The AIDS epidemic wiped out an entire generation of LGBT activists, artists, and left a gaping irreplaceable hole in our history. Trump’s weird bullshit hangups and seemingly depth-less willingness to court the religious far-right could easily cause another.

We’re all gonna fucking die because of these idiots.

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