Donald Trump’s ‘transgender mice’ lie is way more embarrassing than you even realize

There were so many mind-numbing utterances squeezed into President Donald Trump‘s feature-length address to Congress on Tuesday night — which has single-handedly left approximately 50% of Americans in a bad mood for the rest of the week — that somehow it took us a minute to pick up on perhaps his strangest claim of the lot. Wait, what was that about Biden making mice transgender?

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During his speech, Trump alleged that his sainted DOGE (Department of Governmental Efficiency) had uncovered that the previous administration had squirreled away $8 million dollars into “making mice transgender.” This got a big laugh from his loyal Republicans in the room, causing Trump to nod as if to say “I know, right?” before adding, “This is real.” Now, don’t everyone clutch their pearls in surprise all at once but… This is not real.

Initially, CNN fact-checked Trump’s bizarre claim incorrectly, assuming that he must’ve been referring to the $477,121 applied to research into the effect feminizing hormones can have on the immune system, which included monkeys as test subjects. To this, the White House hit back with fury, labeling CNN fact-checkers as “fake news losers” and maintaining that “president Trump was right (as usual).” In actual fact, while CNN did make a goof in linking these two unrelated expenditures, that’s only because the truth of the matter is so embarrassingly stupid on Team Trump’s part.

Trump thinks Biden made mice transgender because he mixed up two completely different words

Trump made a HISTORIC blunder during his speech while bragging he canceled $8 million in funding to turn Mice “transgender.”

The funding was for TRANSGENIC studies, where scientists introduce human disease cells like Alzheimer’s to study a cure. Unreal.

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In what turned out to be a self-destructive move, the White House released a full list of the facts in retaliation to CNN that ultimately revealed the truth of Trump’s dunder-headed blunder. You see, what he should’ve been talking about was not transgender mice but transgenic mice.

A transgenic mouse isn’t a rodent who wouldn’t be allowed to go to their chosen bathroom at Capitol Hill but a mouse whose genome has been altered for the purposes of genetic testing. This is a widespread practice that’s been aiding medical breakthroughs for decades, with the first transgenic mouse created in 1974. In this case, the prior government funded research into transgenic studies looking into potential aids and cures for Alzheimer’s Disease.

A worthy cause, I’m sure most would agree. Especially as the actual amount paid into it was only $1.2 million. That $8 million figure Trump mentioned appears to derive from the sum total of various scientific studies Biden’s administration funded, including an analysis into how sex-specific hormones affect asthma ($3 million), a fertility study ($2.5 million), and a look into the risks of breast cancer for trans men ($300,000).

It’s abundantly obvious what has happened here. Clearly, either Trump, DOGE head Elon Musk, or any of their assorted — and apparently illiterate — underlings got two-thirds of the way through the word “transgenic” and started foaming at the mouth without reading the rest, thereby creating a whole mountain out of a mouse molehill. Presumably, Trump will next complain about the amount of transgender flights that are taking place across the Atlantic.

CNN couldn’t resist rubbing the egregious error in the White House’s face once it was outed. “The morning after Trump’s speech, the White House provided a list of $8.3 million in federal grants to health studies that involve mice receiving treatments that can be used in gender-affirming health care,” reads a press statement. “The White House list made clear what Trump, in the speech, did not: The studies were meant to figure out how these treatments might affect the health of humans who take them, not for the purpose of making mice transgender.“

Of course, this is not to say that there aren’t transgender transgenic mice out there. And to the pride flag-waving Pinky and the Brain wannabes out there: you do you, you trailblazing icons.