Donald Trump claims that schools are performing gender-affirming surgery on students

Former President Donald Trump makes a campaign appearance Thursday, August 29, 2024 at the La Crosse Center in La Crosse Wisconsin. Photo: Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK

In a bizarre rant during a discussion with an extreme anti-LGBTQ+ organization, Donald Trump claimed that schools are performing surgery on students in order to make them transition. This is false.

“The transgender thing is an incredible thing,” Trump said at a “fireside chat” with Tiffany Justice, one of the co-founders of the anti-LGBTQ+ Moms for Liberty (not the one caught having sex with other women). “Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s gonna happen with your child.”

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“And you know many of these childs [sic] 15 years later say, ‘What the hell happened, who did this to me?’ It’s incredible,” he said.

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Gender-affirming surgery is almost never performed on minors. Genital surgery as part of a transition is never performed on minors. Schools are not forcing kids to transition. Trump was simply lying.

Also, the rate of regret for gender-affirming care is lower than the rate of regret for getting a tattoo or weight loss surgery or having children.

Moms for Liberty has spent the last several years attacking LGBTQ+ rights, especially in schools. This includes efforts across the country to ban books by LGBTQ+ authors, attempts to ban students from kissing people of the same sex, supporting laws that ban discussions of LGBTQ+ people in schools, and suing the Biden administration for the right to misgender trans kids. The organization has been designated an “extremist” group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Trump attacked trans people at other points during his appearance at the Moms for Liberty event. He lied and said that Algerian boxer Imane Khelif was a “person that transgendered.” In reality, she is a cisgender woman; she was assigned female at birth and identifies as a woman today.

Describing a fight at the Olympics this year involving Khelif, Trump referred to her with “he” pronouns.

“He ended up winning the gold medal,” Trump said. “And there was another one who also transgendered, and he or she – she – ended up also winning the gold-“

“He,” Justice said, correcting Trump into using the wrong pronoun for Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting, who is also a cisgender woman who was accused of being trans at this year’s Olympic games.

Trump pointed at Justice and laughed. “Tiffany said it, I didn’t. See, I’m a politician, I have to be politically correct.”

“I’m a mom, I have to protect my kids,” Justice replied. She did not explain how misgendering Lin Yu-ting protects her kids.

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