‘Not presidential,’ SC Senate candidate says about Trump’s post others called cruel and offensive

COLUMBIA — After President Donald Trump referred to Annie Andrews using a derogatory term for transgender people, the Democrat running to flip a U.S. Senate seat in South Carolina dismissed his social media post as “definitely not presidential.”

Trump, who likes to assign nicknames to people, used a slur that rhymes with Andrews’ first name in a post Monday reiterating his “complete and total endorsement” for Sen. Darline Graham. Appointed in July to fulfill her late brother’s term that ends in January, Graham and Andrews are competing for the next six-year term.

Trump’s endorsement of Lindsey Graham’s younger sister helped her win the GOP nomination in August to replace him on the Nov. 3 ballot.

Democrats decried the post as offensive and juvenile.

“Donald Trump is back to his old tricks but this slur is deeply offensive, untrue and stoops to a new low. Trump is weighing in on this race because Darline can’t win on her own,” Erik Polyak, director of 314 Action, said in a statement Monday night. The Washington, D.C.-based group supports Democratic scientists and health care professionals seeking office.

Others condemning the post included former GOP Gov. David Beasley.

“This is abhorrent,” he wrote on social media. “Elections don’t have to be about cruelty and lies. South Carolina deserves better.”

At a campaign event Tuesday, Andrews called it a distraction.

“If name calling would help lower gas prices and grocery prices, he can call me all the names he wants,” she told reporters at the Columbia Bethlehem Community Center, a stop on her statewide “Patients and Prices Tour” to highlight her ideas for improving access to healthcare.

“But I don’t think that’s going to get the job done,” she continued.

Andrews hasn’t asked Darline Graham to denounce the president’s statement, she said, because she’s focused on talking to voters.

In the post, Trump wrote that Andrews “is in favor of Transgender for Everyone.”

Graham’s campaign did not respond Tuesday to the SC Daily Gazette’s request for comment on Trump’s post or Andrews’ response.

But in an interview with WACH FOX, she said, “That’s not how I would’ve said it, but I think it’s more about the issue here. She supports hormone treatment to help minors transition.”

Trump’s post followed the Graham campaign drawing attention to Andrews’ own past social media posts about her advocacy at the Statehouse supporting transgender youth. That includes a website titled “Dr. Annie’s Waiting Room,” which looks like a video game, that says Andrews advocated for letting “boys compete in girls’ sports” and “kids make changes they can’t undo.”

In 2022, Andrews publicly opposed the Save Women’s Sports Act. When Gov. Henry McMaster signed it into law, she called it “shameful legislation that does nothing to protect or support women or children in South Carolina.”

But on Tuesday, the pediatrician told reporters she opposes allowing transgender girls and women to compete in female sports.

“My job is to protect all children,” Andrews said. “It’s also not an issue that I’m hearing about when I’m actually campaigning, talking to voters who are struggling to fill up their gas tanks, to pay for their groceries, to keep their lights on at the end of the month. So there’s far bigger problems that we should be focused on in this Senate race.”

She also said she opposes gender-transitioning surgeries on children, which wasn’t happening in South Carolina even before the Legislature passed a law in 2024 banning it. During that legislative debate, Democrats and Republicans agreed such surgeries weren’t happening in the Palmetto State. Proponents called that part of the law preventative.

Other parts of the law banned puberty blockers and transitioning medications for minors under the age of 18.

Asked specifically about youth hormone treatments, Andrews’ campaign said the prohibitions in state law are not something she’s working to change.

“As a mom of three, Dr. Andrews understands and respects the concerns parents have about these issues,” the campaign said in an email Tuesday to the SC Daily Gazette.

Andrews, certified as a pediatrician since 2009, worked at the Medical University of South Carolina through her attempt in 2022 to oust U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace in the coastal 1st District. Much of her advocacy at the Statehouse occurred during that unsuccessful run. Legislators inserted a directive into the state budget that year requiring MUSC to end hormonal therapy for transgender youth under 16.

Following passage of the 2024 state law, Andrews’ former employer additionally stopped providing treatments to all transgender adults. While debate at the Statehouse focused on children under 18, the law included a line barring the use of public funds “directly or indirectly for gender transition procedures.” And MUSC is a public medical university and hospital system.

Andrews called MUSC’s decision an over-interpretation of the law.

“This really boils down to an inappropriate infiltration of politics into our state’s largest medical institution,” she told WCIV-TV in Charleston in July 2024.

At the time, she was working at the Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C. That job, which she held from 2023 until June, involved conducting research and teaching, in addition to seeing patients, her campaign said.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued South Carolina over the 2024 law, arguing it violated transgender South Carolinians’ constitutional right to equal protection. But the ACLU dropped the challenge last year after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a similar law in Tennessee.

Following criticism of his post, Trump doubled down Wednesday by reposting an ad that lampoons Andrews’ prior advocacy with a fictional scene of a man dressed in pink and wearing a pink wig approaching a child in a grocery store. It’s paid for by the Security is Strength political action committee, which backed Lindsey Graham and now Darline Graham.