No, Kids Still Aren’t Getting Transgender Surgeries at School

Two weeks before the election, former president Trump continues to repeat false claims that transgender surgeries are somehow being performed on children at schools across the country without parental knowledge. In other words, it’s just another day in the bizarre reality Donald Trump lives in. At a recent campaign stop in the Bronx at Knockout Barber, co-owner of the barbershop and father Javier Rodriguez asked Donald Trump what he would do to improve the public school system in the Bronx. Trump’s rambling response quickly devolved into a strange conspiracy theory: “No transgender, no operations.” During the interview with Fox and Friends’ Lawrence Jones, Trump says, “You know, they take your kid. There are some places, your boy leaves the school, comes back a girl. Without parental consent. What is that all about? “When they talk about a threat to democracy. They’re a threat,” he continues. Some men in the barbershop can be seen nodding and laughing at Trump’s response, but Rodriguez stares blankly on. “You guys are the same as me,” the billionaire Trump, who grew up in a wealthy family in a 23-room home on the outskirts of Queens, told barbershop patrons in The Bronx. “We were born the same way.”

Trump on Fox & Friends in response to a question about how he’ll fix schools in the Bronx: “No transgender, no operations. You know, they take your kid. There are some places, your boy leaves the school, comes back a girl. Without parental consent. What is that all about?” pic.twitter.com/wViqrk182o — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 21, 2024

This isn’t the first time Donald Trump has spread lies about public school educators providing gender-affirming surgeries for students while they are at school, nor should we assume it will be the last. There is zero evidence that any students have ever undergone gender-affirming surgery at school in the United States. His own campaign has struggled to keep up with his claims and substantiate the former president and convicted felon’s allegations. Despite the fact that public school educators are typically too busy teaching students to perform routine surgical operations on them without the proper medical training or equipment, Trump continues to stoke fear in some conservatives that educators are forcing children to secretly transition without parental consent. Instead of providing solutions to actual problems facing the U.S. education system, Donald Trump seems dead set on spewing anti-trans rhetoric. Despite Trump’s attempt to distance himself from Project 2025, his rant fits right into the conservative manifesto to eliminate the federal Department of Education and curtail LGBTQ+ rights. As election day nears, Trump and his team must hope that voters will be able to overlook his increasingly divisive remarks and outlandish theories when it comes down to the ballot box. Photo courtesy of Nipayata!