Trump Doubles Down On Bogus Gender-Affirming Care Claim His Own Campaign Can't Back Up

Donald Trump rolled out an bonkers, evidence-free claim about gender-affirming care for children during a campaign rally on Saturday.

“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 at school’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation,” Trump told the crowd in Mosinee, Wisconsin.

“Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?”

The false claim arrives just over a week after the former president spewed similar talk at an event that featured anti-transgender hate hosted by the far-right group Moms for Liberty, which has been labeled an “anti-government extremist group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“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,” Trump told Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice.

Trump’s prior claim is false, too, as there’s no evidence showing schools in the U.S. sending children into gender-affirming surgeries — or administering them on school grounds — without parental consent, CNN noted.

Gender-affirming care can also be lifesaving, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, while operations such as genital surgery and mastectomies are rarely performed on minors.

CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale took to social media to knock Trump over his “lie,” adding that the GOP nominee’s own campaign “could not find a single example of this ‘school secretly sends child for gender-affirming surgery without parental consent’ thing having ever happened anywhere” in America.

Justice told CNN last week that while children weren’t “getting surgery in school,” she was