About

Transgender Operations on Illegal Aliens is a memorable quote from the September 10th, 2024, U.S. Presidential Debate between Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, with Trump accusing Harris of supporting taxpayer-funded gender care and transition surgeries for illegal migrants in detention centers during the event. The catchphrase inspired memes and jokes following the debate, with many people poking fun at how absurd the statement sounded and calling it "woke mad libs."

Origin

On September 10th, 2024, ABC News held the second official presidential debate leading up to the upcoming U.S. election, which featured Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump and Democratic candidate and VP Kamala Harris. The debate was livestreamed on ABC's YouTube^[1] channel, where it gathered over 10 million views in five hours.

At one point in the debate, Donald Trump accused Kamala Harris of trying to perform what he called "transgender operations on illegal aliens" in prisons. This segment of the debate was reposted by PBS to its YouTube^[2] channel on September 11th, 2024, receiving over 43,000 views in 13 hours.

According to a September 9th report by CNN,^[6] Harris had responded to a 2019 ACLU questionnaire by saying that she would reduce funding for ICE and provide gender-affirming care to imprisoned people, including detained migrants.

Spread

A screengrab of Donald Trump saying, "And now she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison," during the debate was reposted to Reddit's /r/facepalm^[4] and /r/brandnewsentence^[5] subreddits on September 10th, 2024, where it gathered over 14,000 and 2,000 upvotes, respectively, in less than a day.

Various internet users also posted memes and jokes about the phrase, "transgender operations on illegal aliens," with X^[3] user @RealYouTubeKids posting an absolutenutcase162 meme referencing the line on September 10th, gathering over 70,000 likes in a day.

Also on September 10th, 2024, X^[4] user @cambeserious posted a clip of the alien character Roger from American Dad dressed as a woman alongside Trump's quote, gathering over 100,000 likes in a day.

trump: “they want transgender operations on illegal aliens” the illegal alien: #Debate2024 https://t.co/iyoMWpDSpm

— cameron (@cambeserious) September 11, 2024

Various Examples

Search Interest

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External References