Donald Trump spewed anti-trans lies at Tucson rally for 7 minutes. Here are the claims debunked

Donald Trump repeated a series of anti-transgender lies at a Thursday rally in Tucson.

The former president and current Republican presidential nominee targeted trans youth and Olympic athletes in his meandering speech.

“Can you imagine, your child goes to school and they don’t even call you and they change the sex of your child,” he said, repeating a falsehood he has often used. He blamed this on his Democratic rival for the presidency, Vice President Kamala Harris, as if she has control over school districts around the nation.

At a rally in Wisconsin September 9, he had said, “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? What the hell is wrong with our country?”

Genital surgery is almost never performed on minors, and it certainly isn’t performed in schools. Some young trans people go on puberty blockers and hormone treatment, almost always with the consent of a parent or guardian, and those are administered in medical offices. Some schools allow students to change their names or pronouns, and policies vary as to whether parents are notified. But that’s not by any means “a brutal operation.”

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Trump also repeated the false claim that Olympic boxer Imane Khelif is transgender. When Khelif fought Italian boxer Angela Carini, a “beautiful young woman from Italy … was fighting against a man who transitioned,” he said in Tucson. But Khelif is not trans, nor is she intersex (although, of course, trans and intersex people deserve to participate in sports without discrimination).

“The Algerian boxer was born female, was registered female, lived her life as a female, boxed as a female, has a female passport,” a spokesperson for the International Olympic Committee said during this summer’s Paris games. “This is not a transgender case. There has been some confusion that somehow it’s a man fighting a woman. This is just not the case, scientifically. On that, there is consensus. Scientifically, this is not a man fighting a woman. I think we need to kind of get that out.”

Khelif has filed a cyberbullying complaint in France over the transphobic lies spread about her, naming Elon Musk and J.K. Rowling, and Trump and others may be investigated as well.

Trump further claimed that trans college swimmer Lia Thomas broke an Olympic record. She broke a pool record at Harvard University during the Ivy League Championships in 2022, but she has not broken an Olympic record. She was not allowed to compete in this year's Olympics.

Trump said she won by a lot, misgendering Thomas and exaggerating. “In fact, [Thomas] was having lunch while the other young ladies were recovering. [Thomas] was enjoying a nice lunch as the rest of them were swimming. How demeaning to women, right? Demeaning. How ridiculous.”

Trump said he’d bar “men,” meaning trans women, from women’s sports. He had previously said he will revoke President Joe Biden’s civil rights protections for transgender students “on day one” if he is elected. He has also promised to outlaw gender-affirming care for minors.

“We will keep critical race theory and transgender insanity out of our school,” he said at the Tucson rally. “It’s amazing. It’s insane. You know that always gets the biggest applause. It’s like a poll. You’re like a pollster. You’re like a free poll, I must say.”

Video of his full remarks is below, to watch if you dare.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com