The actual policy (as opposed to the press-release-by-tweets version) isn't clear yet. I'm guessing it hasn't actually been formulated yet. So all's speculation, with regard to reasons and repercussions.
But... contrary to what the usual suspects have been screaming for the last several months, this is a surprising announcement. It's abundantly clear from history that Trump is not homophobic, but rather that the LGBTIQMOUSE establishment is profoundly Trumpophobic.
This isn't really his issue, and, if it did become his issue, I'd have expected him to come down on the other side of it.
This means Trump made the decision based on some very persuasive input from someone outside his inner circle.
(Don't think he's losing any re-election votes over it; the people hyperventilating over this are the same ones who'd never vote for him, even if he were running against Really Literally Hitler.)
Personally? I find trans people somewhat disorienting; this is my problem, not theirs. But I'm not cooped up with a few dozen people, with various Issues, in a confined space, for months on end. For those who are, and for whom unit cohesion is a matter of life and death? Some Issues are maybe bigger deals than they seem to those of us in civilian life.
For different perspectives, see a Twitter rant from J. R. Salzman, and a blog post from David L. Burkhead. Are they right? I dunno. But they (unlike me, or Trump) have the background to comment from a military point of view, so it seems prudent to take their views into account.
Update: A couple more bits of perspective may be found here and here.
Update 2: I speculated that it hadn't been formulated yet? Apparently the Joint Chieves of Staves hadn't heard of it until the Entweetenment.
Also, I read somewhere today that this isn't a change of policy, but the cancellation of a previously-planned change: that trans people are currently forbidden to serve in the military, and have been for (at least) several decades, and that an Obama-ordered change (to the policy, not to the underlying statute, mind you) was scheduled to take effect next year. If this is the case, then Trump merely announced that an unlawful executive order from the previous administration won't be going into effect, and there's no new policy to be formulated. Which is total bull-in-a-china-shop material, right there.
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