Trump is doubling down on the false gender-affirming healthcare claim that his own campaign cannot support

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

“Can you imagine being a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, have a nice day at school’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation,” said Trump to the newspaper. crowd in Mosinee, Wisconsin.

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

The false claim comes just over a week after the former president gave a similar speech at an anti-transgender hate event organized by the far-right group Moms for Liberty, which has been labeled an “anti-government extremist group” by the Southern United Nations. Center for Poverty Law.

“The transgender thing is unbelievable. Think about it. Your child goes to school and comes home a few days later after having an operation. The school decides what happens to your child,” Trump told Tiffany Justice, co-founder of Moms for Liberty.

Trump’s previous claim is also incorrect, because there is no evidence that schools in the US send children for gender-affirming surgeries – or administer them on school grounds – without parental consent. CNN noted.

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

CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale took to social media to topple Trump with his “lie,” adding that the Republican party’s own campaign “couldn’t find a single example of this ‘school secretly sends child for gender confirmation surgery without parental consent’ thing ever happening happened somewhere in America’.

Justice told CNN last week that while children were not “operated at school,” she was “grateful” to Trump for raising the false claim at the Moms for Liberty event.

Critics on social media did not stop Trump, with some citing the number of people injured and killed as a result of gun violence in schools.

The former president’s comments came just days after two students and two teachers were killed in a shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia.