Former Democratic mayor Rahm Emanuel faced some heat on the “I’ve Had It” podcast on Tuesday for dismissing transgender issues as a core party value.
The argument began after host Jennifer Welch called on the Democratic Party to fight back more against President Donald Trump’s agenda.
Emanuel, who has been considered a contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, agreed that Democrats need to stand up for their party but added that they needed to remember the issues that matter to people.
“I will just tell you we looked mighty strange having some of these arguments,” Emanuel said. “We had the luxury of being a superpower. We’re having frivolous arguments about things that didn’t matter to people. We became not a party that was built on the culture of acceptance, but a party that became an advocate for certain things that, in my view, were just nuts. And they weren’t core.”
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He went on to describe how Democrats went “really south” on “family room issues,” but Welch disagreed “one hundred million percent” and attacked him for “selling out” to the “MAGA” narrative.
“The only room we do really well was the bathroom, and that’s the smallest room in the house,” Emanuel remarked.
“That is such bulls—t,” Welch fired back. “That is total bulls–t. That is buying into the right-wing media narrative, and I’m so sick of Democrats like you selling out and saying this. You know who talks about trans people more than anybody? MAGA. MAGA is the most genital obsessed political party I have ever seen.”
Emanuel argued that he had dealt with the issue of bathrooms and marriage equality during his time as Chicago mayor but emphasized that it was not his core issue at the time. Welch went on to claim that Emanuel and other Democrats will continue to lose by not targeting the “gender-obsessed weirdos.”
“I see politicians that are supposed to be leaders in the Democratic Party buy into the narrative that Republicans have defined us by instead of fighting and saying ‘You’re the weirdos that are obsessed with it. Yeah, we’re not going to bully some trans kid,’” Welch said.
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She added how people like her need to live with the consequences of being in a red state. Emanuel, who was seen smirking at her comments, joked how “there is U-Haul if you want to move out.”
He concluded, “I’ll just tell you this: my view is there’s a whole set of issues, and these are side tangential issues. They’re not core, and they’re not core to what we believe in.”
Emanuel also called out his party’s fixation on niche issues like transgender bathroom policies during an episode of “Real Time with Bill Maher” in March.
“I don’t want to hear another word about the locker room, I don’t want to hear another word about the bathroom. You better start focusing on the classroom,” Emanuel said.