White House Lies, Says Trump Is First President to Display Red Ribbon on World AIDS Day
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany falsely claimed Donald Trump was the first president to display a red ribbon on World AIDS Day after being pressed about his erasure of LGBTQ+ people for the fourth consecutive year.
On Wednesday, Washington Blade reporter Chris Johnson questioned McEnany during a press briefing about why the president chose to ignore the LGBTQ+ community in a statement released on Tuesday to honor the annual observance. As them. previously reported, Trump’s official proclamation referred to HIV/AIDS as a “deadly disease [which] disproportionately affects racial and ethnic minorities,” but he did not mention that gay and bisexual men, as well as transgender women, remain disproprtionately affected by the ongoing epidemic.
“The president included a reference to racial and ethnic minorities,” Johnson asked, “so why not LGBTQ people?”
McEnany maintained that Trump’s statement was appropriate and added that the incumbent is the first POTUS to honor those lost to HIV/AIDS by hanging a two-story red ribbon in front of the White House. “The president honored World AIDS Day yesterday in a way that no president has before, with the red ribbon there,” she said, “and I think that he commemorated the day as he should have.”
There’s one problem with that claim, though: It’s not true. According to Politico, the display dates back to the George W. Bush White House, which hung first the ribbon in 2007 at the urging of his associate director of communications, Steven Levine, who is an openly gay man.
https://www.them.us/story/trump-administration-lies-first-president-display-red-ribbon-world-aids-day-kayleigh-mcenany
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Without some dark, hateful undertone. Not. One. Thing. 
