Conservative activist Paula Scanlan fooled social media after posting about how she was ‘waiting to lose all my rights’ under Donald Trump.
Scanlan, who made headlines denouncing her University of Pennsylvania transgender swim teammate Lia Thomas, made the post while posing in the kitchen with a freshly baked pie on Wednesday morning.
‘Still just a girl waiting to lose all my rights in 4 days,’ she wrote on X to caption a photo of her serving up a pie in a kitchen, referring to Monday’s inauguration day.
The post, which has over three million views, was inundated with conservatives asking her what rights she would be losing under a second Trump term.
Scanlan, who works for the voter outreach group Early Vote Action, eventually had to let everyone in on the joke: ‘The biggest lesson I learned today is apparently people REALLY do not understand sarcasm.’
She shared a direct message from a follower who demanded to know which rights she lost under Trump in the first term before immediately replying: ‘Oops nvm.’
‘At least the haters in my dms are starting to self correct,’ she quipped.
In her replies, she explains herself as having ‘voted for Trump’ and ‘not liberal.’
‘This whole saga has been so entertaining. Thank you all.’
Scanlan – who used to swim at the University of Pennsylvania alongside Thomas – has become an activist for the Independent Women’s Forum which seeks to ban transgender women from girls’ sports.
While testifying before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government in June, Scanlan put forward the issue of transgender athletes competing in women’s sports.
She urged lawmakers to put women’s physical safety first when making decisions about women-only spaces like locker rooms – having previously confessed to having ‘nightmares for weeks’ after sharing a changing room with trans-athletes.
Having reportedly been a victim of sexual assault in a bathroom as a 16-year-old, Scanlan shared that Thomas’ presence brought up previous trauma from her adolescence.
Earlier this week, Lara Trump insisted her father-in-law, President-Elect Donald Trump, is a ‘champion of women’ and said she wouldn’t be where she is today without him.
Lara, 42, is gearing up to stand alongside Trump at his second inauguration later this month, but she’s not done working in her role of championing Trump to all Americans, including female voters.
‘This is a man who cares about women,’ Lara, who is married to Trump’s son Eric, reassured the New York Post.
‘And I tell you that as a woman who came into this family … from a background where I had no ability to relate to the Trump family — meaning a business family whose name people knew around the world.
‘Donald Trump helped me get to where I am today. And he’s a constant champion for women with whom he surrounds himself.’
To further her point, she praised on how Trump has plenty of ‘great examples of strong women’ around him, including his incoming Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, cabinet picks Kristi Noem and Linda McMahon, and Attorney Alina Habba.
‘I think that’s what people who get to know Donald Trump appreciates [how] he doesn’t care what you look like, he doesn’t care about your religion, he doesn’t care about your gender, he doesn’t care who you love,’ she told The Post.
‘He cares about whether or not you are going to be able to perform a job to your best ability. It’s something I appreciate as a woman because I never want someone to give me a job because of my gender.’
During early voting, plenty of women pulled up to the polls and voted against the then-Republican nominee, causing tensions in the Trump camp.
Since 2016, Trump has widened his lead with men, but has failed to equally gain women voters.
Days before the November election, he had a 22-point lead among male voters over Vice President Kamala Harris.
However, Harris, who lost the popular vote by 2.2 million, had a 14-point lead with women voters ahead of the 2024 race, a DailyMail.com/JL Partners poll showed.
Harris had even attacked Trump on his views on women during a stop in Phoenix, Arizona, on her campaign trail, telling the crowd: ‘He simply does not respect the freedom of women or the intelligence of women to know what’s in their own best interests and make decisions accordingly. But we [at Harris-Walz] trust women.’
Trump had leaned into the divide, focusing his attention on podcasts with overwhelmingly male audiences, including ones his son Barron suggested.
Despite Harris’ lost, Lara believes she will see a woman president in her lifetime, but doesn’t want her to be elected simply based on her gender – a problem she believes derailed Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
‘Hillary Clinton tried to tell everyone that they should vote for her because she was a woman: “Don’t you want to see a woman as president?”‘ she said.
‘There are a lot of women I can think of right now who I would consider voting for for president. But the second you break it down and use that as the reason people should vote for you, I think you lose a lot of people.’
‘I actually believe our first female president will be a Republican,’ Lara, who recently rejected going for a seat in the Senate, said.