Bruce Jenner made headlines on Friday night when he came out as a transgender woman during a 20/20 interview with Diane Sawyer. As if that weren’t big enough news, the Olympian made another startling announcement that caught several people off guard, stirred up mixed reactions on social media, and sent shock waves through the political community. Jenner told Sawyer he was a Republican.
The two-hour special aired on ABC, and 65 year-old Jenner opened up about his sexuality, family, and politics during the interview. Jenner is most known for his time in the Olympics, but also more recently as the Kardashian family patriarch on the E! show Keeping Up With The Kardashians. Bruce was married to Kris Jenner for 24 years, and not once during that time was anyone made aware that he was secretly feeling like he was a woman trapped in a man’s body.
The conversation turned political when Sawyer asked Jenner what he thought about Barack Obama using the word “transgender” in the 2015 State of the Union address.
“Did you cheer the president?” Sawyer asked Jenner.
“I will certainly give him credit for that,” Jenner responded. “But not to get political, I’ve just never been a big fan. I’m kind of more on the conservative side.”
Then Sawyer just asked Jenner if he was a Republican.
“Yeah, is that a bad thing? I believe in the Constitution.”
Bruce then began to discuss if he thought that becoming a woman would rattle some of the more conservative Republicans, but Jenner responded that he didn’t think either the Democratic or Republican party had a very great understanding about transgender people.
Jenner said while he thinks support for the issue may be hard to come by in the Republican party, he would consider asking Senator Mitch McConnell and Representative John Boehner to champion the cause.
“In a heartbeat, why not?” He told Sawyer. “And I think they’d be very receptive to it.”
Log Cabin Republicans is an organization that supports conservatives in the LGBT community, and they were the first political organization to respond to Jenner coming out as a Republican. National Executive Director of the organization, Gregory T. Angelo, made a statement to the media about Bruce coming out. Angelo said he, “congratulates Bruce Jenner in the tremendous courage he demonstrated tonight, being true to himself both in terms of his personal identity as well as his political identity.”
Bruce has been getting a lot of support from some major celebrities after coming out on national television. In a previous article by the Inquisitr , it was reported that one of the most popular and appreciated reactions to Jenner’s interview, was from famous pop star Lady Gaga . Her tweet about Jenner had 34,82734,827 retweets and 59,34059,340 favorites at the time the article was written.
“We have the chance to write this moment in history together. Let’s empower people like Bruce all over the world by being loving & not mean.”
[Photo courtesy of Richard Shotwell/AP]