Inside a Trump Ad Ridiculing Harris Over Taxpayer-Paid Gender Transition Surgery

Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign is running this 30-second ad on television stations in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin this week at a cost of $2.3 million, according to AdImpact.

On the Screen

The spot begins with a photo of Vice President Kamala Harris looking chagrined next to a headline that, citing a CNN report, declares that “Kamala supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners” — and that a narrator reads in a scornfully disbelieving tone. Ms. Harris is seen forcefully explaining her position in a 2019 interview with the director of the National Center for Transgender Equality.

The ad flashes to a photo of Ms. Harris, edited to look as if she is standing beside a bald, mustachioed person in a bright red dress and lipstick — apparently a onetime Energy Department official, Sam Brinton, who left the administration after being charged with luggage theft. Quotations from The New York Times, ABC News and PBS are shown to back up the narrator’s assertions, as is a questionnaire for the American Civil Liberties Union that Ms. Harris filled out as a candidate in 2019. In one frame, a photo of Ms. Harris wearing an admiring expression is shown alongside that of Rachel Levine, the first openly transgender person confirmed by the Senate to a federal position. Another photo, showing what look like orange-suited prisoners or detainees, is a publicity shot from the Netflix show “Orange Is the New Black.”

The ad ends with video of Ms. Harris alongside what appears to be a drag queen, before cutting to scenes of Mr. Trump, flanked by men and a woman in suits, greeting uniformed blue-collar workers and then showing off his signature to workers in hard hats.

The Script

Narrator

“Kamala supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners.”

Ms. Harris

“Surgery, um…”

Interviewer

“…for prisoners.”

Ms. Harris

“… for prisoners. Every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access.”

Narrator

“It’s hard to believe, but it’s true. Even the liberal media was shocked Kamala supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners and illegal aliens.”

Ms. Harris

“Every transgender inmate would have access.”

Narrator

“Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

Accuracy

The ad accurately quotes Ms. Harris explaining her actions as attorney general of California and her views as a candidate in the 2020 Democratic primaries. It relies on both the videotaped interview and the A.C.L.U. questionnaire. But it omits some important context, namely Ms. Harris’s emphasis in the questionnaire on the need to ensure that people “who rely on the state for care receive the treatment they need,” and her repeated statement that “transition treatment is a medical necessity.”

The Takeaway

Mr. Trump is working hard to portray Ms. Harris as a far-left radical who is out of touch with mainstream Americans, part of a broader effort to define her negatively for the many Americans who say they do not yet know enough about her and want to learn more.

This ad seeks to accomplish that by using gender fluidity, gender-transition surgery and the images of trans people as a cudgel against Ms. Harris over a culture war issue that affects relatively few people. It plays on anti-trans prejudices, inviting viewers to recoil from images of Ms. Harris alongside those of people who plainly do not conform to traditional gender norms, to try to portray Ms. Harris herself as out of the ordinary.

For good measure, the narrator twice refers to Ms. Harris by her first name, which is unusual, and not by her surname.