“Trump’s Team in Turmoil: They Can’t Defend His Shocking Lies About Schools and Surgeries!”

Donald Trump recently joined the Hitler-quoting book banners at Moms for Liberty for their “Joyful Warriors” summit in Washington, D.C., and in addition to him admitting he lost the 2020 election “by a whisker” and a good dash of overt racism, one particular claim of Trump’s stood out for its over-the-top mixture of delusion and conspiracy.

“The transgender thing is an incredible thing,” said 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 children [sic] 15 years later say ‘What the hell happened? Who did this to me?’”

The moment was so ludicrous that it’d be easy for the media to just ignore the comment as it does with so many of Trump’s outrageous statements. However, CNN didn’t just shake its head and move on. The outlet thoroughly fact-checked Trump’s lie and followed up with both his campaign and various conservative groups.

For the record, this is what CNN found when they asked education and health experts about Trump’s lie:

Trump’s claim is false. There is no evidence that US schools have sent children into gender-affirming surgeries without their parents knowing or performed gender-affirming surgeries on site; Trump’s own presidential campaign could not provide a single example of this ever happening. Even in states where gender-affirming surgery is legal for people under age 18, parental consent is required before a minor can undergo such a procedure.

As Dr. Landon Hughes, a fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, made clear to CNN in an email, “There are no instances of children receiving surgeries or access to surgeries from their schools,” adding, “No provider in the US would perform surgery on a minor under the direction of a school, let alone without parental consent.”

While Hughes was speaking about gender-affirming surgery, the same is true if the question was a tonsillectomy—because grade schools and high schools don’t do surgery. You’d be hard-pressed to find a school nurse willing to hand a kid an aspirin without a parent’s permission, much less break out a scalpel.

Little Jimmy is not getting secretly shuffled off for gender-related surgery on his way to history class.

And when CNN asked Trump’s campaign for examples of the “transgender thing” their candidate was pushing, the outlet didn’t receive any. Instead, a Trump spokesperson insisted that she had personally talked to parents who were upset after learning that their children were “being called entirely different names” at school. 

Somehow, that doesn’t seem like the same thing. 

CNN even followed up with four conservative groups, allowing them to take their best shot at showing this “thing” Trump talked about had never happened. Despite right-wing claims that make it seem as if every child in America is only days away from a gender switch, the groups didn’t produce a single case even vaguely related to Trump’s claims. 

However, Tiffany Justice, the Moms for Liberty co-founder who interviewed Trump at her group’s summit, was smitten with Trump’s lie.

“It grabbed your attention,” she said, “and we’re talking about it now, and that makes me very happy.” As with the myth about litter boxes in schools, the right doesn’t care if Trump’s statement has an ounce of truth to it. His lie is one that Republicans can now repeat to audiences who will nod along with the hoax. Another log to throw on the trans-panic bonfire.

CNN did an admirable job of following up on every aspect of this lie and showing … it’s a lie, only a lie, and nothing but a lie. Now, expect Trump to repeat it. Often.