Caitlyn Jenner Appealed to Trump for Help With Her Passport Gender Marker

Caitlyn Jenner says she appealed directly to President Donald Trump after she was unable to change her passport’s gender marker, the Olympic athlete turned Fox News contributor said on a recent episode of the Tomi Lahren is Fearless podcast.

via: Out

As Out first reported Thursday, the Olympic gold medalist, who came out as transgender in 2015, told Lahren that she had appealed to Trump for help after the gender marker on her passport was changed from female to male.

“Recently, I had my passport, I had to get it renewed. I sent it back, comes back gender marker ‘M,’” Jenner told Lahren, explaining that she had previously gone through the process of getting the gender marker on all of her identification, including her birth certificate, changed to female. “So now, I’m in a position, Tomi, that… What do I do? This is a safety factor. I can’t travel internationally anymore. I can’t use my passport.”

Jenner said she attempted to appeal the change by using a standard form to flag it as a mistake, but her request was denied. (Last year, the Supreme Court affirmed the Trump administration’s right to block trans and nonbinary people from choosing the gender marker on their passports.) So her next move was to write a letter to the president, even though she apparently has his personal cellphone number, about the implications for her and other trans people.

“I was in Mar-a-Lago two months ago, wrote a letter, explaining all of this to him, how it’s affecting me and a lot of other people. And unfortunately, he wasn’t there that weekend,” Jenner said, explaining that Secret Service personnel then promised her the letter would get to Trump’s desk.

“I haven’t heard from him. He’s kind of busy right now,” she said jokingly, as if she was about to follow up with “if you didn’t know.” “My gender marker is not big on the issue, OK. So I get that, and I’m not blaming him whatsoever. I love the guy, and I love what he’s doing.”

Jenner, who has been an on-again-off-again supporter of Trump since 2016, refused to place any blame on the president personally while discussing the situation with Lahren. However, she did make some comments about the policy being ill-informed, which seemed to be directed at involved parties within the administration.

“I don’t know what’s gonna happen, because I don’t think this was really thought out, what this means,” she said, going on a tangent about how the policy is especially unrealistic when it comes to trans men, who she claimed have an easier time transitioning because testosterone is “a very strong drug.”

“It’s not gonna work,” she said. “And I don’t know what the solution is yet. And unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to talk to the president about it. But this is a big issue.”

Her post was mocked by those who couldn’t believe she supported a man who, as one person put it, “literally announced that you don’t exist today.”

One person wrote on social media: “Were you in the front row for that? I don’t understand how you can support an office that is trying to re-alienate you from society?”

Another asked: “He just publicly said you are not accepted, how do you feel about him now?”

Her recent comments about her passport struggles have received a similar response online.

One of the most common phrases people are using to react to the news is: “I didn’t think the leopards would eat my face.”

Another commenter phrased it slightly differently, stating: “Trans people who support Trump make zero sense to me. What the hell did Caitlyn think would happen. She really thought tossing other trans people to the wolves would somehow save her from being eaten by the wolves too.”

Jenner — a record-breaking decathlete who reentered the limelight in the 2000s through Keeping Up with the Kardashians — also touched on the fact that her new passport could affect her eligibility to vote, in light of another recent Trump policy. Though she didn’t actually criticize the controversial SAVE America Act, Jenner instead said matter-of-factly that she now wouldn’t have the proper identification. And, as if to affirm her loyalty, she shifted to leveling blame on the left.

“We went so far to the left on this issue for the last 30 years,” Jenner said, referring to trans visibility. “Now, unfortunately, I don’t think I helped it at all. When I came out in 2015, I brought this issue forward, but I had nothing but good in my heart. I thought, ‘This is a very marginalized group of people’ — that I've been dealing with this issue since I was a little kid, and maybe I can make a difference. But unfortunately, the left kind of took my issue.”