Trump makes wild claim that school education is now ‘mostly transgender’
Donald Trump has once again made a totally unfounded claim about the US school system as a means of pushing right-wing, anti-transgender narratives.
The former US president and Republican nominee for November’s presidential election made the comments in a conversation with Kellyanne Conway, his former political advisor, on her Fox News show Here’s The Deal with Kellyanne Conway.
The comments were reported by the Huffington Post but PinkNews has been unable to independently confirm them.
āWe want reading, writing and arithmetic,ā the former president was reported to have said. āRight now, you have mostly transgender. Everythingās transgender.ā
He went on to add: āSome of these school programs, I looked at it the other night ā theyāre destroying our country”.
It is unclear what Trump believes these alleged transgender curriculums contain, but if you ask his running-mate JD Vance the reason for falling maths levels is in the US is because they can name “87 genders”.
āWell, now weāve got American children who canāt add five plus five, but they can tell you that there are 87 different genders and I think both of those things are related,” the Ohio senator told Lance Wallnau, a right-wing anti-LGBTQ+ evangelical preacher.
This is not the first time Trump has made outrageous claims about trans folks and schools.
In September, the GOP nominee said multiple times that school pupils are undergoing gender-affirming surgeries during the school day – a completely false claim.
āThe 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 whatās going to happen with your child,” he said at a Moms for Liberty event.
Following this, at a rally in Wisconsin, he said: ā[Vice-president] Kamala [Harris] supports states being able to take minor childrenā¦ away from their parents, perform sex-change operations, and send them back home.
āCan you imagine youāre a parent and your son leaves the house and you say: āJimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day in schoolā, and your son comes back with a brutal operation? Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?ā
When asked about the comments byĀ CNN, Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice admitted the claims were false but said she was āthankful to President Trumpā for saying it because it drew attention to the topic of social transition in schools ā the process when students change their presentation or pronouns.
āIt grabbed your attention and weāre talking about it now, and that makes me very happy,ā she said.
The comments were very quickly debunked by medical professionals and members of teachers unions, who pointed out many schools can hardly afford new textbooks let alone the medical equipment to perform a highly complex and invasive medical procedure.
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