The press seems to be in a new cycle of self-debasement regarding the president, and it is getting tougher to keep up with the flailing. The amusement is in the reactionary claims being made that are devoid of accuracy, but the tedium arrives in the need to gather facts and collocate those with their claims. This is the environment created around our contemporary media complex - the rush to prove Trump wrong bypasses sound research, and we need to perform the cleanup. 

One example: On PBS they delivered a report that Donald Trump claims that his deportation efforts stemming immigration are wrong, as he has a deportation rate that is right in line with Joe Biden’s at the time. Okay then, why were we treated to hysterical coverage of Trump’s deportation efforts for the past couple of months if what he is doing is actually the status quo? They fail to assess their own approach, and the newest outrage-fest of this nature involves…transgendered mice.

One of President Trump’s pull quotes from his joint session speech on Tuesday night involved government spending on experiments of transgendered mice. This has sent the press spinning. As Bob Hoge reported, CNN performed a fact-check on this comment and promptly hopped on a rake. The outlet rushed to “disprove” Trump by stating the only experiments of this sort involve monkeys, but after a White House statement listing a number of rodent studies, it altered this correction in - dare I say it - a mousy fashion. 

Keep in mind, this was in a fact-check, which is supposed to be the final authority on a news item. It stands as yet another example of a news outlet declaring a topic to be asserted in a finalized fashion, only to be unraveled when shown to have conducted only cursory research.

Now getting caught in a similar trap is Rolling Stone, which takes a slightly different tack in disputing Trump. This claim is that Trump conflated a different aspect of mice research in order to rile up his MAGA followers; he was referring to a similar component and stoked woke outrage with his inaccuracy, goes the claim. But this was not an innocuous error by Trump - it was a willful deception, according to the article. 

President Trump's address to Congress included a line designed to go viral in the right-wing misinformation machine: a lie that Biden spent $8 million on "making mice transgender."

The real research was for human health.https://t.co/amRha013eg

— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) March 5, 2025

The subheader declares this was intentionally misleading on Trump’s part: “A line designed to go viral in the right-wing misinformation machine.” And, as we have become conditioned to expect these days, when “misinformation” is being accused it is likely misinformation being used. 

Writer Miles Klee tried to stipulate that President Trump and the DOGE were deceptive by citing evidence concerning “transgenic” mice - those genetically altered for the sake of conducting various forms of research. The use of transgenic mice is a very common practice. But after the White House issued its clarifying statement (which led to CNN’s alterations), Klee acknowledged this report, and then softened his language.

As for the “trangender” mice, it’s possible that the Trump regime’s sweeping efforts to root out language associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion led them to health studies that involve “transgenic” mice.

It stands as one of the biggest tells in an argument that when the language becomes altered, that is where deception is found. Note we move from lies and misinformation to it being “possible” that they misidentified these studies. “A clumsy or automated search for any mention of ‘trans’ material in medical records might easily have flagged ‘transgenic’ studies.” This is hedging now, with Klee alleging this was done to create a dumbed-down talking point. Yet he ignores that investigators would likely get tripped up by more conventional uses, such as “transplant.”

Klee also changes the argument concerning the White House report, where he argues the administration doubled down on Trump’s comment. He refutes these studies because the intent was to conduct experiments that apply to other human applications, such as cross-hormone therapies or the effects of gender-affirming treatments on issues like asthma or other ailments in humans.

These are still experiments that cite not transgenic mice, but the gender effects on the rodents. That was the original argument. You get the sense that Klee found himself caught, as he tried to claim they misidentified transgenic studies and then came to realize transgendered mice are in fact a reality in research.

The White Coat Waste Project has been compiling a number of these research studies, and while the validity or import on human impacts can be debated, the reality is that Trump and the White House did not fly off the handle and invoke “transgendered mice” in reckless or deceptive fashion. Transgendered research with mice is in fact taking place.

Take this study from the University of Michigan that declares upfront the gendered condition of the mice used in its study.

This is a Michigan University study that declares they are transgendered.
It was not an invented label, they declared it. pic.twitter.com/IV3jjvlr2p

— Brad Slager: CNN+ Lifetime Subscriber (@MartiniShark) March 6, 2025

That experiment involved implanting female mice with testosterone. In a similar study, male mice were dosed with estrogen to measure the impact of gender-affirming hormone therapy. That is as straightforward of transgender mice research as you can get, and it cannot be dismissed as misreading a scientific term. 

Other studies have been listed as well with differing applications of trans-hormonal experimentation.

• AUGUSTA UNIVERSITY: We will use the four-core genotype (FCG) mice which includes females with ovaries and testes and males with testes and ovaries.

• DUKE UNIVERSITY: We will develop a mouse model of XHT (Cross-sex hormone therapy) that recapitulates clinical hormone therapy for male-to-female transition in humans.

• EMORY UNIVERSITY: Microbiome mediated effects of gender affirming hormone therapy in mice.

• TULANE UNIVERSITY: Female mice were implanted with testosterone-releasing capsules to study its effects on vascular health.

This is presented not to debate the merits of these experiments but to illustrate that there are transgendered and trans-focused research with the mice. So to dismiss this as a misreading of the clinical term “transgenic” is itself misinformation. You can see where once they happened upon that term these journalists hit the brakes, convinced they caught Trump in an audacious or even intentional error.

This exposes yet again the unwillingness of those in the press to engage a topic in good faith, instead relying on their inherent opposition to Trump and merely seeking out only validating evidence. It is classic confirmation bias, the type seen from conspiracy theorists, and it runs contrary to solid journalism.

DOGE is finding billions of dollars in wasteful spending, and the Democrats are losing their minds as they realize their gravy train and woke projects are coming to an end.

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