Believe it or not, Donald Trump is an unlikely culture warrior. He’s not particularly religious, he was the first American president to name an openly gay cabinet member, and his natural position on abortion is one of compromise and middle ground.

Left to his own devices, Trump would probably be perfectly happy as a golfer, a builder, and a problem-solver. But the issue of abortion has been thrust upon him, and it’s the most intractable problem on the American political landscape.

Indeed, were it not for abortion, Trump would be running away with the 2024 presidential race. According to a new Fox News poll, which has him leading Kamala Harris nationally by a 50-48 margin, Trump’s two strongest suits, the economy and the border, are the top two issues on the minds of American voters, at 40% and 17% respectively. But just behind them, at 15%, is abortion. And despite the economy being the runaway overriding issue, abortion is the most animating one, the issue about which many voters — especially women voters — feel most deeply.

While the Republican position on abortion is legally and morally the right position, it’s also a politically fraught one. But, as Trump has learned recently, there’s another issue out there on which Republicans have much stronger political footing: the issue of men competing against women in sports. As The Washington Times reports:

Transgender athletes’ participation in women’s sports has emerged as a sleeper issue that is poised to attract elusive female suburban voters to former President Donald Trump and other Republican candidates on the ballot.

Some see it as an outlier, but the matter is increasingly drawing the attention of voters as more biological males who identify as women join the rosters of female teams and compete — and win — against girls and women at the middle school, high school and collegiate levels.

This isn’t news. We’ve been covering the transgender sports issue for years, and we noted more than a year ago that it had hit a wall politically and had begun to settle in as a loser for the Left — a loser that actually pits the Democrats’ traditional LGB coalition against the more recent T addition.

Gallup polling highlighted the Democrats’ dilemma last year, and we suspect it’s gotten even worse: “A larger majority of Americans now (69%) than in 2021 (62%) say transgender athletes should only be allowed to compete on sports teams that conform with their birth gender. Likewise, fewer endorse transgender athletes being able to play on teams that match their current gender identity, 26%, down from 34%.”

We’ve been watching the ever-growing rift on the Left — a rift in which Democrats are beginning to distance themselves from the transgender cultists. And we’ve been rooting for heroic women like Riley Gaines, who’ve made it their mission to restore decency and fundamental fairness to women’s sports.

“What I’m learning,” said Gaines recently, “is what me and my teammates and girls around the country have gone through — losing out to men on opportunities, or being exploited in locker rooms, or some women being hurt or injured in their sports — that is becoming increasingly common and people are fed up with it.”

And now Donald Trump is doing so on the campaign trail. As Fox News reports, he called the Left’s fixation with “transgender” men in women’s sports “so far out” in a recent interview on Barstool Sports.

Toward the end of the interview, Trump was asked by his hosts, former NFLers Taylor Lewan and Will Compton, how he planned to unite a country whose divisions seem to be spinning out of control.

“So, you want to see the country united,” he began. “But you have a very conservative side and a conservative side, and then you have people that want to see an open border and things. A lot of it is so far out. Like, for instance, they want men playing in women’s sports. I don’t think I could ever say I’m thrilled about that. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen people really hurt. … The whole thing is ridiculous.”

“I will keep men out of women’s sports,” Trump has been promising at campaign rallies.

And it’s not just Donald Trump. His normally deferential wife, Melania, has also weighed in. “Male bodies,” she rightly said, “generally have physical advantages — muscle strength, height, bone density, and lung capacity — that can affect fairness in competition, even at the high school level. High school athletes often dedicate years to training with the hope of being recruited by universities. Seeing that dream collapse is an unnecessary and avoidable consequence.”

It’s one thing for a polarizing figure like Donald Trump to take up the issue, but it’s quite another for Melania Trump to do so. If they’ve lost the former first lady, the Rainbow Mafia’s transgender sports fetish is likely on borrowed time.