NBC national security reporter Ken Dilanian is finding out the hard way what it’s like to get on the bad side of the concern trolls that run Media Matters.

In two segments on two different shows on MSNBC earlier today, Dilanian was reporting on the Julian Assange breaking news story. During his reports, he referenced Chelsea Manning, who is now a transgender woman. Except that’s not the description Dilanian used:

“Assange conspired and encouraged Manning to steal those top-secret documents,” he said in the first broadcast. “Recall that Manning was a private with the army in Iraq at the time, and he downloaded on disks tens of thousands of highly classified documents relating to both the military and the State Department, and what these charges say is that Assange encouraged him to do that in a criminal manner.”

“Chelsea Manning was an Army private stationed in Iraq, he was downloading hundreds of thousands of top-secret U.S. government files from the military and from the State Department, and he was sending them to Assange and WikiLeaks to make public,” Mr. Dilanian said later.

The liberal website had a fit over Dilanian calling Manning “he” and “him”:

The indictment and DOJ’s press release correctly gender Manning, but Dilanian misgendered Manning throughout his reporting during both MSNBC’s Live with Stephanie Ruhle and MSNBC’s Live with Hallie Jackson. Misgendering trans people is a tactic used by right-wing media and extreme anti-LGBTQ groups to invalidate trans identities. The act has been described as “completely draining to a trans person’s mental health,” and it “can trigger anxiety, depression and gender dysphoria.”

One Twitter user went so far as to bizarrely accuse Dilanian of “going full MAGA” on Manning:

https://twitter.com/LouiseBagshawe/status/1116396824141750273

This is ridiculous.

What likely happened is that Dilanian referred to Manning as “he” and “him” because during the time Manning was in the Army he was still a man.

This is just one of the many problems associated with allowing people to change their gender on a whim. They obviously had lives before they changed genders, and stories about their activities during those times should reflect their gender at that time.

For example, Caityln Jenner wasn’t an Olympian. Bruce Jenner was. “She” didn’t win gold medals. He did.

Media Matters is outright beclowning itself on this issue, but considering their history that’s not exactly a surprise.

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—Sister Toldjah is a former liberal and a 15+ year veteran of blogging with an emphasis on media bias, social issues, and the culture wars. Read her Red State archives here. Connect with her on Twitter.–