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June Is Pride Month: But Not According To Donald Trump

By Stacey Cole
Published on: 22:44 PST, Jun 1, 2017

June is LGBTQIA+ Pride Month, but is U.S. President Donald Trump aware of this? It looks like Trump is abandoning the tradition to declare June Pride Month, the month when America celebrates equal rights and speaks out against discrimination.

On June 1, 2017, America woke up to a disappointing realization that June may no longer be Pride Month, at least according to President Trump.

Trump has drawn ire on social media for keeping his lips sealed about June being Pride Month.

It’s June 2 and neither the U.S. President nor any White House official has commemorated LGBTQIA+ Pride Month yet, further triggering furious reactions in the wake of Trump announcing the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate change agreement signed by nearly all countries on the planet.

U.S. 42nd President Bill Clinton, Democrat, started the tradition of declaring June LGBTQIA+ Pride Month on June 1, 1999 and carried on the tradition on June 1, 2000, his final year in office.

However, when 43rd President George W. Bush, Republican, assumed office in 2001, the tradition of making June Pride Month was broken for the next eight years of his tenure.

U.S. 44th President Barack Obama, Democrat, revived the tradition on June 1, 2009 and kept declaring June Pride Month every June 1 through 2016.

And then came the 2016 presidential election, surprise victory of Republican Trump and June, 2017, when no declaration of Pride Month from Trump or any White House official has been made – though his daughter Ivanka Trump did commemorate the start of LGBTQIA+ Pride Month.

So far, President Trump is continuing the 100 percent record of Republicans refusing to declare June to be LGBT Pride Month. Despite controversial reports about Trump’s alleged hatred towards the LGBTQIA+ community circulating on the Internet, he did declare himself a supporter of LGBTQIA+ rights during the 2016 election campaign.

But no statements over June being Pride Month have been made by Trump, a self-described staunch supporter of the LGBTQIA+ community, signaling that the Trump administration may not be so pro-LGBTQIA+ after all.

TMZ reached out to “several White House officials” to hear their statements about Pride Month, but so far no one has made any comments.

Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence – now U.S. Vice President – has a worrying record on the subject of LGBTQIA+ rights. Pence has been a prominent conservative figure in battles over same-sex marriage and equal rights in the last decade.

But not all of the Trumps may be refusing to celebrate equal rights with Pride Month, as the President’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, broke the silence on the matter and celebrated the start of LGBTQIA+ Pride Month 2017 via Twitter.

Ivanka Trump took to Twitter “logging back on after [the Jewish holiday of] Shavuot” to commemorate the start of Pride Month on June 1 and acknowledged that “this month we celebrate and honor the #LGBTQ community.”

In a separate tweet, Ivanka Trump said she was “proud” to “support my LGBTQ friends and the LGBTQ Americans who have made immense contributions to our society and economy.”

Ivanka Trump, who according to a February report by The New York Times helped along with husband Jared Kushner to kill a proposed executive order that was reportedly supposed to scrap Obama-era LGBTQIA+ protections, is no stranger to distancing herself from her father’s conservative views.

There have been multiple reports of Ivanka Trump trying to advise her father against pulling out of the Paris climate change accord, but apparently her attempts have been futile.

Ivanka Trump was not able to change President Trump’s mind on the subject, as he withdrew the U.S. from the agreement – signed by all countries but Syria and Nicaragua – on Thursday, setting off waves of anger among world leaders and climate change experts around the world.

[Featured Image Collaboration includes photos by Chip Somodevilla, George Frey/Getty Images]

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