Donald Trump Bizarrely Claims New York Schools Have Gender Affirming Surgeries Done on Children 'Without Parental Consent'
Donald Trump repeated his false claims that schools allow children to undergo gender affirming surgeries without permission from their parents during a Monday, October 21, interview.
While discussing how to improve the school system in the Bronx, Trump had a bizarre answer — "No transgender, no operations."
"You know they take your kid. There are some places your boy leaves the school, comes back a girl. Okay. Without parental consent," he insisted. "What is that all about?"
"When they talk about a threat to democracy. They’re a threat," he continued. "Could you imagine without parental consent? At first, what I was told that was actually happening, I said, you know, it’s an exaggeration. No. It happens!"
"It happens in areas where it happens," he said, without giving any specific examples. "We’re not going to let it happen, but we are going to straighten out a lot."
"What we’re going to really do, though, is give you a lot of jobs and a great economy, and you’re going to be able to straighten yourselves out," he concluded.
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This isn't the first time Trump has made the wild claims about schools organizing surgery for their students. He made similar comments at a September rally in Wisconsin. "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?" he said at the time. "What the h--- is wrong with our country?"
That same month, during a Moms for Liberty event, the former president, 78, said: "The transgender thing is incredible. Think of it. 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."
Despite Trump's claims, there is "no evidence that U.S. schools have sent children into gender-affirming surgeries without their parents knowing or performed gender-affirming surgeries on site," according to a fact-checking report from CNN.
"Trump’s own presidential campaign could not provide a single example of this ever happening," CNN stated in September. "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."
Dr. Meredithe McNamara, who works as an adolescent physician at the Yale School of Medicine, also told the network, "Of course everything in this statement is false. Of course surgery of any kind happens in a qualified medical center and not in a school. Of course parents are the medical decision-makers for their kids, especially when it comes to gender-affirming care."