Rudy Giuliani’s daughter: Trump an existential threat to women, trans and gay people

Caroline Rose Giuliani, the daughter of Rudy Giuliani, a former New York City mayor and attorney to former President Trump, is sounding alarm bells over the possibility of a second Trump term. 

Giuliani during a Wednesday appearance on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront” said the stakes could not be higher this election for historically marginalized communities, including the LGBTQ community with which Giuliani identifies. 

“Politics have always been divisive,” said Giuliani, 35. “But this is different, because if you are a woman, a trans person, a gay person, a person of color, a person with disabilities, Trump’s actions and rhetoric threaten your very existence.” 

“So, when someone you love supports them, it’s really, really hard to reconcile,” said Giuliani, who wrote in a Vanity Fair essay published this week that she is “grieving the loss of my dad to Trump.” 

A federal appeals court late last month disbarred the elder Giuliani in Washington over his efforts to prevent the transfer of power following Trump’s 2020 election loss to President Biden. In July, a five-judge panel disbarred Rudy Giuliani in New York, ruling that he “flagrantly misused” his position as an attorney for the former president and his campaign to make “intentionally” false statements to courts, lawmakers and the public. 

“I still believe that we should be trying to find the common humanity with those we disagree with, even in this time,” Caroline Rose Giuliani said Wednesday, “but I also see that if Trump becomes the president, that is going to become an impossible task for a lot of people.” 

“The only way our families and our country can have healing is if we all get out there and vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz,” she said. “I really believe that." 

Civil rights groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Human Rights Campaign have warned against a second Trump term since the former president announced his reelection bid in 2022, cautioning that a return to power could have dire consequences for LGBTQ and women’s rights and unravel years of progress on racial equality. 

Two-thirds of Americans in a 2020 NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll said Trump had worsened racial tensions in the U.S. as president, particularly in the immediate aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, a Black man killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis in 2020. More recently, Trump falsely suggested that Vice President Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, misled voters about her race.  

Harris, who would make history as the nation’s first female president if she is elected in November, is the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, both immigrants to the U.S. 

Trump has vowed to enact a slate of policies targeting members of the LGBTQ community if he is reelected in November, including a nationwide ban on gender-affirming health care for transgender minors and a federal law that recognizes only two genders — male and female — a proposal that would effectively end legal recognition of trans and gender-nonconforming people in the U.S. 

Log Cabin Republicans, a conservative LGBTQ rights group, has pushed back on claims that a second Trump term would threaten gay rights. 

Abortion rights groups have warned that access to reproductive health care and fertility treatments like in vitro fertilization will be sharply curtailed if Trump returns to the White House next year. Trump on Tuesday said he would not sign a federal abortion ban if one made it to his desk during a potential second term, though he has also said he has “no regrets” that his handpicked Supreme Court justices overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the constitutional right to an abortion. 

Trump’s running mate, Ohio Republican Sen. JD Vance, said during Tuesday evening’s vice presidential debate that states should decide their own abortion laws, a position that Trump has also said he supports. Vance expressed support for a national ban on abortion as recently as 2022.

Former first lady Melania Trump in a video posted to social media Wednesday said there is “no room for compromise” on individual freedom, which includes a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy.