Part 1: Donald Trump Told the Truth About Sage Blair

What he didn't explain was why it happened

Nearly an hour into his State of the Union address last night, after lying about our economy, our national mood, and the impact of tariffs, President Trump told a story about a young woman, Sage Blair, and her legal guardian, her grandmother Michele—who were both in attendance. The story sounded too crazy to be true, but it was true.

My forthcoming book includes not just the story of what happened to Sage, but the complex philosophical and structural shifts that answer the question of why it happened. It’s too much for a single post, so I’ll serialize it over the next few days. The first post is free. Here’s a 10% discount for those who wish to subscribe to read the others.

From Trump’s State of the Union address

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When Sage Blair was just a baby, her father died and her mother went to prison. It took her paternal grandmother, Michele, almost two years to gain custody and become her legal parent. Eventually, Michele and her husband Roger left Massachusetts to raise Sage in Virginia, where the cost of living was cheaper, and they could spend more time with her.

Sage grew into a happy and well-adjusted child: artistic and musical, a straight-A student in a private, Christian middle school. But around age twelve, as puberty began, her mental health declined: disordered eating, depression, cutting. One time she thought she heard voices. Sage spent a short stint at an inpatient psychiatric hospital and went on psychiatric meds. She seemed to be doing better, but then COVID-19 hit.

Thirteen, alone and online, she began to ask for different clothes and hair. Loose plaid shirts and jeans. A short haircut, which Roger accommodatingly dyed blue, then purple. She said once she might be a lesbian. Michele said, “You do you, girl.”

In August 2021, Sage started ninth grade at a public high school in Appomattox. Michele provided the administration with Sage’s mental health records, which included “major depressive disorder, recurrent episode,” “intentional self harm by sharp object,” and her hospitalization. On the second day of school, Sage’s science teacher told school counselor Dena Olsen that she’d overheard Sage saying she wanted to use a boy’s name and he/him pronouns. In the hallway later when they talked, Sage said she identified as a boy named Draco.

Sage went on to make eight visits to the counseling office to discuss gender identity during those first two weeks of school with Olsen and the other school counselor, Avery Via. The counselors connected Sage to other trans kids via websites and apps, and told her she could use the boys’ bathroom.

But her social transition at school did not go well. Boys swore at her, threatened her, said they’d rape her to prove she was really a girl, to sodomize her until she admitted that she liked boys, to push her out the window of the bus and hold her by her hair. They followed her. They shoved her against the wall. They threatened to shoot her. They told her they knew where she lived.

The counselors didn’t believe her reports of abuse until moms, who’d heard from their own kids about the harassment, called the school. They later insisted that Sage told them that Michele and Roger weren’t supportive, and cautioned them not to use Draco or male pronouns when they called. So when speaking to Michele, Olsen and Via didn’t mention the gender issues, the boys’ bathroom, the harassment. They just said that there were safety concerns—the first time Michele had heard about them.

At home that afternoon, Michele found a hall pass on Sage’s floor. It said Draco. When Michele asked about it, Sage admitted that she was identifying as a trans boy at school, and was terrified of the boys, of what they’d do to her.

It’s okay, Michele said. Everything’s okay. She assured Sage that she didn’t have to return to school. They’d figure it out in the morning.

But by the next morning, Sage was gone. She’d left a note: “You’ve done your job, Jesus loves you. I’m afraid of what is to come if I stayed. Be on your guard. There are bad people around here.” She ended with: “All my love.”

Nine days later, the FBI found her in Maryland, but there would be seventeen hearings before Sage’s parents could get her back.

Sage had been talking to older men online in chat rooms, assuming they were teen boys or trans kids. One agreed to help her run away from the dangerous boys at school. He picked her up on a road leaving town, raped her—her first sexual experience—trafficked her across state lines to Washington, DC, locked her in a house where she was raped again, then trafficked her to another house in Baltimore, where she was kept in a locked room and loaned out to the captor’s “family members,” who raped her repeatedly.

Michele didn’t know how the FBI located her, or even exactly when. Sage had already been at a girls’ detention facility in Laurel, MD, for several days, when they finally called. Michele and Roger raced to Maryland, but they weren’t allowed to see Sage. They waited in their car until they could appear in court at 4 PM. They had no idea why.

In court, the two school counselors testified via Zoom that Michele was abusive. Sage’s court-appointed attorney claimed she and Roger were unfit to take her home because they kept calling Sage “Draco,” and using she/her pronouns. They’d only learned about the name on the day that Sage ran away, they told the judge, but the judge got angrier and angrier. Michele was in tears. Roger was seventy-two years old, he couldn’t remember to say Draco either. Eventually the judge threw him out for misgendering Sage—or Draco. Michele kept saying, “We don’t mind that she’s transgender. We’re just a little traumatized. Our kid just got sex-trafficked.”

The judge berated her: Not Sage. Not she.

Okay, okay, Draco, okay, Draco, Michele said. Give me a chance to get used to it. I’ll do it.

Michele had been a volunteer CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) for foster children since 2015, helping kids struggling in the system. She knew she had to behave herself in court, to tamp down the tears and the terror. Still, she pleaded with the judge that it was not about gender; it was about trauma. She said it so much that the judge ordered her not to repeat it and declared her a hostile witness. He said: “This is not a sex-trafficking case. This is a transgender case.”

Michele and Roger were deemed abusive and denied custody, informed that they couldn’t bring Sage home. Because Sage identified as a trans boy, there was nowhere to put her, so she stayed in juvenile detention. When Michele returned for a second hearing, begging for Sage to be placed in a more appropriate environment. The Judge sent Sage to the boys’ section of a state-run children’s home. She was sexually assaulted again. She received no counseling.

As this was happening, Child Protective Services investigated the Blairs, despite the fact that Michele had already passed a background check to become a CASA. It took months to be cleared by the departments of social services in Virginia and Maryland, and during that time, Michele could not visit or contact Sage, even on her fifteenth birthday.

In Maryland, Sage attended public school wearing a GPS tracker on her leg. She began to go by Justin; Draco no more. Three months later, after continually trying to regain custody, Michele received a call from a Baltimore social worker: Sage had gone missing.

Someone, perhaps a teacher, had helped Sage get the GPS off her leg and she boarded a bus to Texas. There, she was trafficked again. Though the local authorities, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and the FBI had all been notified that she was missing, the Baltimore authorities wouldn’t let Texas police track Sage’s phone, because she wasn’t linked with any crime.

Finally, Sage posted a picture on Instagram of a crow on the hood of a car, parked before a convenience store, which Sage’s friend saw and shared with Michele. The Texas Marshall found the store, reviewed surveillance footage, found the car, called Michele to fly down. At last, they were reunited.

Later, Sage told Michele that the court-appointed lawyer had coached her to say her parents were abusive, because they wouldn’t accept her as transgender. Michele had never officially lost her parental rights. But it was forty-four days between the night Sage left and when Michele got her back.

What could make counselors, lawyers, and judges assume that not using pronouns was a crime so vile that it warranted separating a traumatized young woman from her family?

This is not just a story of how the school secretly facilitated Sage’s social transition, hiding it from her parents. It’s the story of how school personnel came to believe that to do so was their duty. It’s about how the justice system learned the same talking points about gender identity and came to see un-affirming—or, in this case, unaware—parents as so harmful that their kids were better off without them. It is the story of how a few poorly executive papers in the early 2000s about the importance of family acceptance were misinterpreted—and used to hurt families instead.

Part II coming tomorrow.