Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., is facing progressive backlash for comments about transgender youth athletes while discussing dissent on the left.
A top aide to Rep. Seth Moulton, a moderate Democrat from Massachusetts, has reportedly resigned after the lawmaker’s recent comments about transgender athletes and the left’s tolerance for dissenting views.
Moulton has faced a barrage of criticism from progressives after he used the issue of transgender athletes in school sports to illustrate his complaint that liberals showed little capacity for dissent in an interview with The New York Times.
Hours after the interview was published, his campaign manager Matt Chilliak resigned, according to the Boston Globe.
The report did not cite a reason, and Moulton’s campaign would not comment on personnel matters.
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Fox News Digital reached out to Chilliak for confirmation.
The Democratic operative posted on X shortly after Trump won the election in the early hours of Wednesday morning, “Millions of Americans today showed that they hate immigrants and transgender people more than they fear fascism.”
Moulton had told the Times, “Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face.”
“I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that,” he said.
The congressman responded to the backlash in a statement to Fox News Digital: “I stand firmly in my belief for the need for competitive women’s sports to put limits on the participation of those with the unfair physical advantages that come with being born male.”
“I am also a strong supporter of the civil rights of all Americans, including transgender rights. I will fight, as I always have, for the rights and safety of all citizens. These two ideas are not mutually exclusive, and we can even disagree on them,” Moulton said.
“Yet there are many who, shouting from the extreme left corners of social media, believe I have failed the unspoken Democratic Party purity test. We did not lose the 2024 election because of any trans person or issue. We lost, in part, because we shame and belittle too many opinions held by too many voters and that needs to stop. Let’s have these debates now, determine a new strategy for our party since our existing one failed, and then unite to oppose the Trump agenda wherever it imperils American values.”
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LGBTQ rights group Mass Equality said Moulton’s comments in the Times “have further compounded our community’s sense of vulnerability.”
“[T]he Congressman’s remarks were both harmful and factually inaccurate,” the group said.
Massachusetts state lawmaker John Moran wrote on X, “No, Seth Moulton, the only thing we here in Massachusetts shouldn’t be afraid to say is that you should find another job if you want to use an election loss as an opportunity to pick on our most vulnerable. Weak!”
He’s not the only Democratic lawmaker blaming their party for wearing political blinders after the 2024 elections, however.
Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., wrote on X, “There is more to lose than there is to gain politically from pandering to a far left that is more representative of Twitter, Twitch, and TikTok than it is of the real world. The working class is not buying the ivory-towered nonsense that the far left is selling.”
