Jill Biden calls Donald Trump a ‘bully’ and ‘dangerous to our country’ at Human Rights Campaign event

Attendees of the Human Rights Campaign’s Equality in Action conference in Virginia witnessed a rousing speech by First Lady Dr. Jill Biden who took the stage at the Sheraton Pentagon City near Washington, D.C., Friday morning. Dressed in a striking bright yellow skirt suit, Biden was introduced by Human Rights Campaign president Kelley Robinson.

Biden's speech comes days after the launch of the Biden-Harris campaign’s Out for Biden-Harris LGBTQ+ voter initiative and is also a crucial rallying point ahead of upcoming elections. Out for Biden-Harris, covered earlier this week exclusively by The Advocate, seeks to reengage and mobilize the nearly 11,000 LGBTQ+ volunteers who were instrumental in the 2020 electoral victory.

Addressing the audience of over 500, the first lady shared her personal reflections and the administration’s accomplishments, but the core of her speech was a firm stance against bullying and pointed criticism of former President Donald Trump, whom she labeled a “bully” and “dangerous to the LGBTQ community, to our families, to our country.”

“We’ve made progress, but there’s still so much more to do. And we can’t, and we won’t go back and refight the fights of the past,” Biden declared, outlining the ongoing legislative attacks aimed at the LGBTQ+ community. She described the current climate of eroding freedoms, with state laws increasingly targeting LGBTQ+ rights.“Just last month, we had to fend off more than 50 antigay amendments that Republicans tried to force into the government funding bill,” she noted.

Biden’s speech was not just a reflection of past achievements — such as codifying marriage equality through President Joe Biden’s signing of the Respect for Marriage Act, the end to the ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men in 2023, and the allowance for transgender Americans to serve openly in the military (one of Joe Biden’s first actions as president) — but also a call to action.

“History teaches us that our rights and our freedoms don’t disappear overnight. They disappear slowly, subtly, silently: a book ban, a court decision, a ‘don’t say gay law,’ Jill Biden said.

Biden recalled an incident where she confronted a neighborhood bully when she was a child, connecting it to the current political struggle: “I had no idea what I was going to say to him. But when he opened the door without thinking, I pulled back and punched him right in the face,” noting that she would have rethought getting physical.

“Still, my 13-year-old self, you know, had this point that’s relevant today: When bullies threaten our loved ones, when they strip away our basic rights and deny our basic humanity, when they put our country and our democracy at risk, there’s only one thing to do: We fight,” Biden said.

She directly addressed the dangers posed by another Trump administration. “We have to fight like hell until Joe and Kamala have another term,” she said.

Her speech concluded with chants of “four more years” from the crowd. She then spent nearly 20 minutes at the front of the room, stepping off the stage and shaking hands and taking selfies as Lady Gaga’s “Born this Way” played on repeat.