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GOP Candidate Running Against Justin Amash Just Unleashed a Wildly Transphobic Ad

“When I get to Washington, I'm gonna get busy cutting the pork — NOT the sausage.”
Cameron Joseph
Washington, US
GOP Candidate Running Against Justin Amash Just Unleashed a Wildly Transphobic Ad

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A Republican running to face independent Michigan Rep. Justin Amash is out with an ad chock-full of transphobic jokes and attacks.

Tom Norton, one of the Republicans looking to unseat Amash, blasts the congressman for breaking with his old party on a vote that would have barred active-duty transgender soldiers from getting gender reassignment surgeries.

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Norton then makes a series of transgender jokes, finishing with a crack about gender reassignment surgeries.

“Justin Amash is having an identity crisis. He, like Nancy Pelosi, both support taxpayer-funded sex changes. In Michigan, we take a more binary view on things. And taxpayer-funded sex changes just don't cut it,” Norton says in the ad. “Guess Justin's gotten a little confused after spending years of being something he's not — like a Republican.”

Standing in what appears to be his kitchen as he serves sausage and eggs to a pair of kids, Norton talks up his military service and support of President Trump — then delivers the punchline as he chops into a block of sausage: “When I get to Washington, I'm gonna get busy cutting the pork — NOT the sausage.”

That attack is a seeming reference to a 2017 House vote where Republicans attempted to insert language into the annual defense authorization bill to bar the armed forces from funding gender reassignment surgery and therapy for transgender service members.

Amash was one of 24 Republicans who crossed party lines to vote against the amendment, which fell just short of passing.

READ: Republicans won't call Trump racist but one thinks white people are "people of color"

Norton defended the spot, telling VICE News that he had no problem with transgender people — as long as they did it on their own time.

“When you join the United States armed services, it’s not for you to be able to sit there and decide what to do and what to do. You are signing over your life to the United States government — not so you can sit there and get assistance for a life choice decision you want to make. The military doesn’t cover hair transplants. But you want them to cover sex changes? That doesn’t make sense to me,” he said.

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“If you want to be transgender, you do it before you join the military or after you leave the military,” Norton continued. “You shouldn’t be doing those type of surgeries during the military because the military’s job is to blow shit up and to kill things. That is the military’s job.”

Norton, isn’t exactly a serious candidate — he raised just $10,000 in the last fundraising quarter, and Michigan GOP state Rep. Jim Lower appears to be the party favorite as he seeks the seat.

Amash, who left the GOP earlier this month after calling for Trump’s impeachment, may not even wind up running for reelection as an independent — he hasn’t ruled out running as Libertarian Party’s nominee for president.

But the ad itself is a thing to behold.

Cover: YouTube