GOP Congressman Calls McBride "Gentleman" During Her Tribute to Women—Including a Cancer Victim's Memory
A Georgia Republican couldn’t resist turning the moment honoring important Delaware women into a transphobic soundbite for the anti-trans Twitter mob.
What do an esteemed military chaplain, a beloved daughter lost to ovarian cancer, Delaware Congresswoman Sarah McBride, and an entrepreneurial small business owner have in common?
All are women owed deference on the floor of the House this week. However, Andrew Clyde—a Republican from Georgia appointed the Speaker pro tempore during a short absence of Speaker Mike Johnson—used his brief turn at the podium to demean them, turning a moment meant to honor women into a display of calculated disrespect aimed at Congresswoman Sarah McBride and designed to score cheap political points.
The Jan. 13 morning hour of debate in the House began when the Speaker, a congressman representing Georgia’s 9th congressional district, called McBride to the podium—introducing the co-chair of the Equality Caucus with a masculine honorific as the “gentleman from Delaware.” McBride had been called to recognize esteemed Delawarean women.
McBride commended Rev. Dr. A’Shellarien Addison for her promotion within the Delaware National Guard—the first woman chaplain in Delaware Guard history. She also paid homage to the closing of GrassRoots, a local small business chain founded by two women in the 1970s, Marylin Dickey and Vonna Taylor.
Finally, she recognized Dwayne and Karen Johnson, who lost their 26-year-old daughter Faith to ovarian cancer. They turned their grief into life-saving medical advocacy, helping to usher in a law that required health insurance companies in their state to cover yearly ovarian cancer screenings.
“We owe it to Faith and families across the country to keep pushing for early detection,” McBride concluded.
She left the podium without incident and did not reply to the Speaker’s comment. In turn, the congressman has either posted or reposted transphobic content about Sarah McBride half a dozen times since the seconds-long incident went down on Jan. 13.
The congressman in question is otherwise known for barricading the doors on Jan. 6 to stave off “the mob who tried to enter” the Capitol, which he also described as a “normal tourist visit” with “no insurrection.”
It’s not the first time McBride has had to deal with hate and harassment on the House floor. In February of last year, a representative from Illinois’s 15th congressional district used masculine terms to address McBride. Republicans subsequently went on a public hate campaign because the congressional record fixed the incorrect language to accurately refer to McBride.
Then, in March, Texas Republican and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe Chair Keith Self addressed the congresswoman as “Mr. McBride.”
“Thank you, Madam Chair,” McBride replied.
She seemed prepared to move on and do her job, but her Democratic colleague from Massachusetts, Congressman Bill Keating, wouldn’t let yet another jab at her very existence pass by unchallenged. Keating and Self got into a heated exchange. “Mr. Chairman, you are out of order,” Keating said. “Have you no decency?”
Republican lawmakers also passed a Capitol anti-trans bathroom ban aimed explicitly at keeping McBride out of the women’s restroom—although all Capitol Hill visitors and staff have also been caught in the dragnet. McBride agreed to follow the rules, but denounced the effort as a ploy “to distract from the real issues facing this country.”
This didn’t stop South Carolina’s Rep. Nancy Mace, who regularly hurls slurs across the House floor, and Colorado’s Rep. Lauren Boebert, Mace’s hateful counterpart who was ejected from a theatre for behaving inappropriately with her date, from deputizing themselves as the bathroom police. In Jan. 2025, they accosted a woman they believed to be Congresswoman McBride in a Capitol Hill bathroom.
In actuality, the individual in question was an unsuspecting cisgender woman, caught by surprise when she was suddenly thrust into the crosshairs of the GOP’s anti-trans attacks.
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And she still thinks these things can “meet her in the middle”. She has no respect for herself nor do her so called colleagues stand up for her. Meeting in the middle doesn’t mean throw away your self respect, what a dangerous precedent to set for us
It should be mentioned, if we get a majority which by itself can impeach Trump! & Co., that same majority can expel a member -- and should do so for all who so abused Rep. McBride.