Late-night host Stephen Colbert on Monday tore into the Trump administration’s new proposal to narrowly redefine the legal definition of “gender” based on biological features, saying, “Oh, now you care about science.”
The Trump administration is reportedly weighing a proposal that would change the legal definition of gender to identify individuals as male or female based on their genitalia at birth.
The move would tighten gender definitions and essentially remove transgender and gender nonconforming identities from the legal definition.
{mosads}“Oh, now you care about science,” Colbert fired back. “Wow. How convenient.”
“I haven’t reviewed the science of climate change but I am very interested in what science has to say about baby junk,” Colbert went on to say, doing an impression of President Trump.
The president has denied climate change and claimed it was “created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing noncompetitive.”
Trump said last week that scientists “on both sides” have gone back and forth on the issue but said he had a “natural instinct for science.”
Colbert called Trump’s new proposal another “random act of cruelty.”
“This time they spun the wheel of discrimination and they landed on transgender,” Colbert said.
The host joked that Trump can’t just redefine something to make it go away.
“I learned that the hard way when I tried to convince everyone in high school my nickname ‘Skidmark’ was because of all the cool driving moves I did,” he said with a laugh.
The new policy proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services, first reported on Sunday by The New York Times, would roll back protections for roughly 1.4 million Americans who identify as members of the trans community.
Advocacy groups protested outside of the White House on Monday.