As the 2024 GOP primary hurdles to New Hampshire, right-wing pundits are picking up a familiar attack in an apparent effort to derail former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley — part of a recent and revealing pattern where partisan talking heads pressure Republican politicians to adopt increasingly harsh anti-trans policies. Presidential primaries present a rare opportunity for the activist base of a political party to extract concessions, and right-wing media have not passed up the opportunity to pressure the candidates to promise further discrimination against trans people, despite voters’ demonstrable lack of interest in the issue.

In early January, anti-LGBTQ account Libs of TikTok posted a 2023 clip of Haley saying that “the law should stay out of” decisions between families and their doctors about gender affirming care, calling Haley’s position “disqualifying.” Fox News’ Laura Ingraham later attacked Haley for refusing to directly answer a question about whether it is possible to change genders, comments echoed by Daily Wire personality Michael Knowles. SiriusXM’s Megyn Kelly called the answer “a total fail.”

If this tactic sounds familiar, it is because it’s been used by the same set of trans-obsessed pundits against former President Donald Trump, Haley’s remaining opponent. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — who ended his own campaign after a disappointing finish in the Iowa caucuses — previously attacked Trump as “a pioneer in injecting gender ideology into the mainstream,” shortly after the governor’s campaign produced a meme-filled video that drew criticism for being simultaneously homophobic and homoerotic.

Both lines of attack were ridiculous on their face. During his time in office, Trump banned trans people from the military, threatened to “define transgender out of existence,” and has pledged to “ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth” if reelected. 

Haley, similarly, has been no friend to the transgender community, despite what Trump’s right-wing media allies claim. She has previously called excluding trans women from sports with other women “the womens’ issue of our time,” called trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney “a guy” from the stage, and suggested that transgender teens were to blame for rising suicidal ideation in cisgender teenage girls – a notion debunked by medical professionals. 

Attacks on both Haley and Trump for the same perceived sin of being “too soft” on the trans community make little sense in the context of a political horse race. But if you believe, as some right-wing pundits have said, that the primary was never a real contest, it starts to make more sense. 

When all has been said and done — when Haley announces the inevitable end of her campaign and endorses Trump, the candidate who she has pledged to support even if he is convicted of breaking federal espionage laws or attempting to overthrow the constitutional order — the 2024 GOP primary was little more than an exercise in extracting campaign promises from politicians who might otherwise become hesitant to continue humoring the right-wing media’s trans obsession in the face of obvious electoral setbacks.