Fringe Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy claimed he was an expert on gender while attacking the trans community as just crying for relief from their "mental illness."

Unprompted, Ramaswamy immediately weighed on the homophobic right-wing attacks on the LGBTQ community.

Host Chuck Todd asked how he intends to "unite the country when you're essentially denigrating the views of half of the country?"

"I don't think I'm denigrating the views of half the country. I mean, let's take the touchiest of those subjects right now on the trans issue," he said.

Why is Vivek discussing the trans community? That wasn't the question.

"I think that when a kid says that I'm born into the wrong body, that my gender doesn't match my biological sex, more often than not, that is a case of a mental health disorder," Ramaswamy said. "That doesn't mean you disrespect that person. It means they're crying out for help."

Calling everyone in the trans community mentally ill and crying out for help is not disrespectful at all? Seriously?

Later in the interview Todd asked him how he knows with certainly that gender is a binary issue.

"You're calling it that, but how do you know it's that? Are you confident that you know that gender is as binary as you're describing it? Are you confident that it isn't a spectrum?" Todd asked.

"I am," Vivek responded.

"Do you know this as a scientist?"

"Well, there's two X chromosomes if you're a woman, an X and a Y. That means you're a man."

"There's a lot of scientific research out there that says gender is a spectrum."

"Chuck, I respectfully disagree."

Ramaswamy didn't even wait to be asked about the trans community to bring it up. Don't we have enough hate in this country coming from the Christian nationalists?

Why NBC News chose to give Ramaswamy prime time coverage on Meet the Press is beyond me.