Mike Pence spent most of his life and his political career selling America a very curated version of himself.

Mike sold us this deeply Christian, socially conservative, old-school persona, a man who believed in traditional marriage, traditional views on sex, and two genders.

Long after Pence was gone from Team Trump, he was still describing the trans movement as this “radical gender ideology. He openly opposed trans military service, he backed restrictions on gender-transition procedures for minors, and he insisted over and over that there are only two genders.

This was Mike Pence’s persona, and nothing could shake it.

Until the new story out of The Atlantic dropped… now, we’re all wondering if Mike Pence is the new leader of the trans revolution.

It all started with a trans CIA officer who goes by the name “Julia Curlee.” He went public with an extraordinary story about Mike Pence. According to Curlee, while Pence was part of the Trump admin, he would brief the VP every morning for about a year. He said Pence asked him to extend the assignment, and when that assignment finally ended, Pence invited him and his family to the White House.

Of course, it’s not weird that Pence would be polite and professional to a CIA officer. That’s not the remarkable part of this story. What makes it remarkable is how Curlee describes the relationship he had with Pence.

According to this transgender CIA officer, one of the most famously socially conservative politicians in America didn’t just tolerate him; he felt affirmed by him… more than anybody else ever had, apparently.

And boy oh boy, Pence really laid it on thick.

Curlee remembered the time Pence met his mother at the White House. He actually referred to Curlee as his “daughter.” Curlee told the Atlanic what that interaction meant to him and Pence.

And this is where MAGA readers are probably going to raise both eyebrows.

The Atlantic:

“No one has affirmed my gender identity quite like Mike Pence.” “Well,” he said, “I’m glad I passed the test.”

That is quite a testimonial for Mike Pence, whose entire reputation has been carefully built around traditional Christian conservatism.

Passing “tranny tests” doesn’t sound very traditional, does it?

And it’s not like Curlee was some quiet, wall-flower CIA transgender who was still in the closet.

Many years before the Pence relationship unfolded, Curlee was already writing about his transgender identity, the CIA, and the bigger movement.

And speaking of the CIA’s love of trannies, we’ll get into more of that later…

As for Curlee, when he began writing about his trans life, he did so secretly. Nobody knew his real name yet.

Back in 2017, Curlee wrote another essay for The Atlantic under the pseudonym “Jenny Hall.” Curlee confirmed in his new piece that he was Hall and that the earlier essay was about his experience transitioning while working at the CIA.

The Atlantic:

“I relish the idea that I’m ISIS’s nightmare: trans, gay, Jewish, CIA, and worst of all, female.”

The 2017 essay celebrated the CIA’s acceptance of transgender employees and pushed for other American institutions to do the same.

That makes Pence’s role in Curlee’s later story even more weird and disturbing.

Because while Curlee was fighting the trans war from one side, Pence was publicly standing firm on the other.

At least that’s what he told us he was doing.

Back in 2023, Pence was still making the conservative case against transgender service in the military.

Scripps News:

“I just believe that the introduction of transgender soldiers in the military has not contributed to our readiness and ultimately is a distraction.”

Mike Pence made it clear that he would ban transgender troops.

You can see why Curlee’s story lands differently than some story about two people from different backgrounds just getting along and working together professionally.

Public Pence was campaigning against what he called “radical gender ideology,” but private Pence was an ally to the radical trans revolution.

Mike Pence has been lying to somebody. Is it the MAGA movement or the trans? Our bet is that he’s been lying to MAGA the entire time.

But wait, there’s another twist…

After January 6, 2021, Pence invited his former “Daily Brief” staff back to the West Wing for a farewell photo.

Curlee says he became emotional and told Pence he’d never been prouder to have worked for him because of what he had done the previous week with the 2020 election. Pence thanked him and told him how much that meant to him.

For MAGA, that little detail lands with a big ol’ thud.

Because J6 is the moment when Pence’s relationship with Trump’s movement shattered into a million pieces.

Now, we have a transgender CIA official applauding Pence for certifying an election that at least half the country thought was a fraud.

And speaking of Trump, Curlee is very critical of Trump’s second term and says he’s hostile and exclusionary toward the trans movement. He says he left the CIA after nearly two decades in government service.

But he opens his departure story by saying his CIA colleagues were betting on how quickly Trump’s admin would fire him, then describes Trump’s declaration that the federal government would recognize only two genders as another ominous sign of what was coming.

There was just one problem with his dramatic setup…

Nobody had actually fired him yet.

Here’s how Curlee tells it in the Atlantic piece:

At the CIA, they’d started an office pool on when I’d be fired.

President Trump would be sworn in for his second term at noon; the smart money had me gone by 12:15. But the smart money hadn’t counted on Trump’s first pick to run intelligence for the National Security Council being shredded by an online mob on suspicion of disloyalty. There wasn’t yet anyone in place to fire me.

After taking the oath, Trump spoke at the Capitol. “As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female.”

“Did he … ?” an NSA colleague asked. She glanced at me and looked away.

“Yeah,” I muttered. The good news: I was one of those two genders. The bad news: The administration would have views as to which one.

Trump’s return is a threat for him. His scientific “two-gender policy” is some kind of warning shot. Curlee is already bracing for the worst before anyone has even shown him the door.

But when Curlee looks back at Mike Pence, he gets all warm and fuzzy. You can already see where he draws the lines. The GOP establishment is clearly where Mr. Curlee feels more at home.

And that’s why the supposedly hard-line Christian conservative becoming one of the heroes in a transgender CIA officer’s personal story is very interesting indeed.

For MAGA, which already views Pence as the ultimate establishment traitor, that’s going to leave a mark.

Curlee’s story might also ring familiar for longtime Revolver readers.

Years ago, in one of our most viral pieces, we argued that the transgender movement had become one of the most aggressive and strangely influential forces inside left-wing institutions. We used a comparison to the Ottoman “janissaries,” the elite fighting force recruited from conquered Christian populations and converted into soldiers for the empire.

Our term for their modern cultural counterpart was memorable.

Here’s what we wrote at the time.

Revolver:

or those who didn’t grow up playing Age of Empires II, janissaries were the elite soldiers of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, which conquered the entire Balkans and Near East during the 15th and 16th centuries. They fought and won the toughest battles for the last and greatest of the Islamic empires that waged war against Christian Europe.

Today, it’s common on Twitter or in comments sections to see people quip that the most elite, tip-of-the-spear troopers for modern leftism are America’s growing pool of transgender people. Or, as the pun goes, “trannissaries.”

Why is the transgender movement so “successful?” In no small part, it’s because of how fanatically committed its members are to defending and advancing their ascended fetish. Why is transvestite content so successful online? Because transsexual radicals make up a very disproportionate share of moderators and power users on sites like Reddit or Wikipedia, and will harass or ban all who stand against them. Why is drag queen story hour everywhere? Because it turns out there are a whole lot of creepy autogynephiles eagerly volunteering to hang out with young children.

[…]

The comparison between the janissaries of old and the trannissaries of today is even more robust than that, though, and makes for some revealing insights about the nature of both the modern regime and its favorite playthings.

Both are the converted children of conquered peoples.

The most famous trait of the Ottoman janissaries was their unusual method of recruitment. New janissaries were made through the *devshirme, *(literally “collecting”), in which Ottoman officials went into the provinces, took boys aged roughly 8-15 away from their families, and brought them back to Constantinople for training as soldiers. In a major twist, though, the boys recruited were not taken from Turkish families, or other Muslim groups. Instead, they were taken from the conquered Christian peoples of the empire: Greeks, Albanians, Bulgarians, Serbs, and so on.

It’s an interesting piece that’s worth a read today:

Tranissaries: The Trans Movement’s Striking Parallels to a Dark and Forgotten Practice in the Ottoman Empire

As for Mr. Curlee’s story, and other transgenders around that time, it’s fair to note that the CIA wasn’t just “dealing with” them. They’d been openly recruiting them and promoting the CIA as this inclusive safe home for them.

It got so absurd, that around 2012, CIA recruiters were actually showing up at Pride events to talk about careers. The agency also had its own network for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender officers and allies.

But Curlee gives us an even more interesting detail about all of this “recruitment.”

In her 2017 Atlantic essay, she actually ended it by encouraging transgender kids to consider working for the CIA, and said they’re “always recruiting.”

And according to Curlee, the CIA used her articles on college campuses to recruit people.

The CIA has spent years marketing itself as a welcoming place for LGBT recruits.

And right in the middle of that world was one of the most supposedly “fire and brimstone” Christian conservatives in Washington.

Clearly, with all we know now, MAGA’s instincts about Pence were spot-on. He’s a phony. And now, thanks to this transgender CIA officer who spilled the beans, we have an even deeper and darker look behind Mike’s fake curtain.

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