The Atlantic's Elaine Godfrey has spent years covering former President Donald Trump and is used to him making false statements that are divorced from reality.
However, a recent speech by the former president at a Moms for Liberty left Godfrey feeling more flummoxed than usual.
In fact, writes Godfrey, Trump's statement was so unusual that she felt the need to "look around in confusion at the people near me in the audience" to see if they understood what he meant.
The Trump statement in question seemed to suggest that public schools were essentially forcing students to undergo gender reassignment surgery without getting permission from their parents.
“The transgender thing is incredible,” he said. “Think of it; your kid goes to school, and he comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.”
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Godfrey proceeded to inform readers everything that's wrong with Trump's claim about schools forcing children to undergo sex changes.
"Schools are not providing sex-change operations to students," she writes. "Even from a purely financial perspective, that seems obvious: Teachers still have to buy their own crayons; schools aren’t shelling out for surgeons. Second, educators are not deciding 'what’s going to happen' with students, beyond subjecting them to a pop quiz or an in-school suspension."
Godfrey went on to add that Trump's statement was "a dangerous, unstable dog whistle to the QAnon followers in his party, who have long argued that Democrats are sexualizing children."
