Trump just doubled down on his latest bizarre fiction around trans kids and schools. As the 2024 presidential election draws nearer, the Republican nominee is continuing the party’s push towards vilifying the trans community. At a rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin, Trump explained to his fans the horror that parents faced across the country as they sent their children to school only for them to have returned with gender-affirming surgeries.

A version of this claim first appeared in his interview at the annual Moms for Liberty summit on September 6 when he told the audience “Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation.” For anyone in any shadow of doubt, it might be worth pointing out that that is not happening.

In fact, this was such an obvious fabrication that even Tiffany Justice, the cofounder of Moms for Liberty who led the conversation, has acknowledged in to CNN that Trump’s claim is a lie. However, the complete lack of facts behind the claim doesn’t diminish the practical use that Justice can see in it. In fact, after noting “Are kids getting surgery in school? No they’re not,” the Moms for Liberty cofounder went on to explain she was “thankful to President Trump” as “It grabbed your attention, and we’re talking about it now, and that makes me very happy.”

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Well, it’s another win for Tiffany Justice with Trumps comments from his September 7 rally in Wisconsin as he continued to talk about it. When it came time to rail against the transgender menace, Trump imagined a scenario. “Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much. Go have a good day in school’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation. Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?”

Trump doesn’t always seem to say what he means to say. The first time that Trump came out with his fiction around schools giving trans kids surgeries without parents even knowing about it, it might have been feasible to assume he had accidentally overstated concerns about teachers keeping the social transition of students a secret. With his latest comments (and other comments from his campaign), it’s clear that is not the case. He is fully in on this particular fantasy and wants to make it clear that this is the vision Kamala Harris has for the United States.

“Kamala supports states being able to take minor children and perform sex change operations, take them away from their parents, perform sex change operations, and send them back home.”

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Trump’s outlandish claim of the United States handing out free healthcare should debunk themselves, it’s worth knowing the full score. In most states, it is not legal for a trans minor to receive any form of gender affirming surgery. In the few states where it is legal, parental consent is required. And they happen in hospitals, not schools.

As with so many claims that the Trump campaign (and his administration before that) have pushed, there’s no foundation in truth here, but that isn’t why they say it. Trump and his people aren’t worried about fact checks, they’re focused on making the base angry and building the wall that is “us vs. them” mentality. With this repetition of another Big Lie and Trump criticizing Tim Walz as being “very into transgender” (what ever that is supposed to mean), we can presumably expect another few weeks of this until we hit November.

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