Donald Trump just lately joined the Hitler-quoting book-banners at Mothers for Liberty for his or her “Joyful Warriors” summit in Washington, D.C., and along with him admitting he misplaced the 2020 election “by a whisker” and sprint of overt racism, one explicit declare of Trump’s stood out for its over-the-top combination of delusion and conspiracy.
“The transgender thing is an incredible thing,” stated a slouching, low-energy Trump. “Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child, and you know many of these childs [sic] 15 years later say ‘What the hell happened? Who did this to me?’”
The second was so ludicrous that it’d be straightforward for the media to simply ignore the remark, prefer it does with so a lot of Trump’s outrageous statements. Nevertheless, CNN didn’t simply shake its head and transfer on. The outlet completely fact-checked Trump’s lie and adopted up with each his marketing campaign and numerous conservative teams.
For the report, that is what CNN discovered after they requested schooling and well being specialists about Trump’s lie:
Trump’s declare is fake. There isn’t any proof that US faculties have despatched youngsters into gender-affirming surgical procedures with out their dad and mom realizing or carried out gender-affirming surgical procedures on website; Trump’s personal presidential marketing campaign couldn’t present a single instance of this ever occurring. Even in states the place gender-affirming surgical procedure is authorized for folks underneath age 18, parental consent is required earlier than a minor can bear such a process.
As Dr. Landon Hughes, a fellow on the Harvard T.H. Chan College of Public Well being, made clear to CNN in an electronic mail, “There are no instances of children receiving surgeries or access to surgeries from their schools,” including, “No provider in the US would perform surgery on a minor under the direction of a school, let alone without parental consent.”
Whereas Hughes was talking about gender-affirming surgical procedure, the identical is true if the query was a tonsillectomy—as a result of grade faculties and excessive faculties don’t do surgical procedure. You’d be hard-pressed to discover a college nurse prepared to hand a child an aspirin and not using a dad or mum’s permission, a lot much less get away a scalpel.
Little Jimmy isn’t getting secretly shuffled off for gender-related surgical procedure on his strategy to historical past class.
And when CNN requested Trump’s marketing campaign for examples of the “transgender thing” their candidate was pushing, the outlet didn’t obtain any. As a substitute, a Trump spokesperson insisted that she had personally talked to oldsters who have been upset after studying that their youngsters have been “being called entirely different names” at college.
In some way, that doesn’t appear to be the identical factor.
CNN even adopted up with 4 conservative teams, permitting them to take their greatest shot at displaying this “thing” Trump talked about had ever occurred. Regardless of right-wing claims that make it appear as if each little one in America is just days away from a gender swap, the teams didn’t produce a single case even vaguely associated to Trump’s claims.
Nevertheless, Tiffany Justice, the Mothers for Liberty co-founder who interviewed Trump at her group’s summit, was smitten with Trump’s lie.
“It grabbed your attention,” she stated, “and we’re talking about it now, and that makes me very happy.”
As with the parable about litter bins in faculties, the best doesn’t care if Trump’s assertion has an oz. of fact to it. His lie is one which Republicans can now repeat to audiences who will nod together with the hoax. One other log to throw on the trans-panic bonfire.
CNN did an admirable job of following up on each facet of this lie and displaying … it is a lie, solely a lie, and nothing however a lie. Now, anticipate Trump to repeat it. Typically.
