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Bradley Manning is still a traitor. And he's also still a man.
(Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Bradley Manning is still a traitor. And he's also still a man.

The Democrats have, for several months now, been in a state of convulsive rage over WikiLeaks. They tell us that WikiLeaks is in league with Putin. They tell us that WikiLeaks subverted our system and destabilized the very foundations of our democracy. WikiLeaks stole the election. Sabotage! So on and so forth.

With this in mind, it seems a little odd that right in the midst of this apocalyptic hand wringing over WikiLeaks, the president would choose to commute the sentence of a guy who went into a war zone, stole reams of classified files, and gave them to WikiLeaks. Bradley Manning didn't merely release email correspondences between DNC officials where they complain about Bernie Sanders and talk about spirit cooking. These weren't embarrassing revelations about a political party. These were hundreds of thousands of secret documents relating to national security, appropriated during a time of war, and "leaked" indiscriminately with no regard to how it would undermine our war efforts and even less regard for the lives it put at risk. The Democrats apparently want us to believe that humiliating Hillary Clinton is a far worse crime than jeopardizing the safety of our troops, intelligence officers, and allies. The word "outrageous" does not even begin to describe what's going on here.

It would appear self-defeating as well. Why would the Democrats — who have almost unanimously applauded this move, by the way — suddenly decide to undermine their own case against WikiLeaks? Shameful hypocrisy has never slowed them down before, granted, but even by their standards this is a rather extreme case of it. They must know that they've made it impossible for anyone to take them seriously the next time they whine about email leaks and "election hacking." It so discredits them, makes so little sense, makes them look so utterly foolish, renders their own arguments so fantastically irrelevant, that you may conclude that the entire Democrat Party has gone into a state of collective psychosis.

That's not a bad theory. Not too far from the truth, either. But there is, you might say, a method to this madness. And you can understand the method once you understand that, in the world of modern leftism, the letters "LGBT" override anything and everything. At the very top of the progressive Victimhood Hierarchy sit the members of this elite club. Any opportunity to advance their cause must be exploited. Any time the Great Cause and some other concern collides, the Cause wins out. These are the priorities of leftism nowadays. Its only one priority, really. Nothing — and I truly mean nothing — is more important than its sexual agenda.

So, Bradley Manning, a traitor to the United States who gave assistance to the enemy, a convicted spy who would have been put in front of a firing squad not too long ago, will now be a free and celebrated man for one single reason: he pretends he's not a man. Because Manning "came out" as "transgender" after committing his act of treachery, he became a hero to the Left. A trans hero, specifically, which is the most heroic kind of hero. That's why he will be getting out of prison. For that reason and no other.

The Left admitted upfront that it wants Manning out of prison solely because he cross dresses. Before his commutation was announced, the media wrote story after story describing the "bleak life" of a "woman" in a men's prison. They insisted that it's an injustice to force a woman to remain incarcerated with men. And they're right, that would be an injustice; but no such injustice had actually occurred. Bradley Manning was a man when he entered prison. He's a man now. He'll be a man when he leaves. He'll be a man until he dies and even still afterwards. Complaining that a "transgender woman" wasn't transferred to a women's prison is like complaining that a lunatic who thinks he's a polar bear won't be transferred to the local zoo.

As per usual, Manning had already been given enormous privileges thanks to his "transgender" status. The government was bending over backwards, going to extraordinary lengths, to accommodate his delusions:

She can now wear female prison undergarments, including a sports bra, and “subdued cosmetics.” In early 2015, she was permitted to get speech therapy to feminize the tone and pitch of her voice and began cross-sex hormone therapy prescribed, Mr. Strangio said, by an endocrinologist brought in from the military’s Walter Reed hospital.

Since then, Ms. Manning wrote, she has developed breasts and curvier hips. “There have been significant changes since I’ve been taking the hormones, and I am happy with them,” she said. But, citing security risks, the military rejected the recommendation of an outside psychologist who said she should be permitted to further feminize her appearance by growing her hair longer than male military standards. Mr. Strangio is helping her challenge that restriction.

But this wasn't enough. It never is. We were using tax money to facilitate the sexual fantasies of a traitor, but still the Left was not satisfied. They never are. Manning's "transgender" status shouldn't merely entitle him to privileges in prison, they demanded. It ought to entitle him to a get-out-of-jail-free card. The laws against espionage ought to be suspended in his case. Let other spies and traitors face the just consequences, but not Manning. He's better than them. He's more important. He's at the top of the Victimhood Hierarchy. Let him out and next we'll complain of persecution if he isn't immediately named Nobel laureate, Medal of Honor recipient, and honorary Wheel of Fortune champion.

Obama was happy to oblige, to the extent that he could. And now this will stand as one of the most deranged and despicable things he's done as president, which is saying something. An impressive grand finale to a shameful presidency.

To see more from Matt Walsh, visit his channel on TheBlaze.

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