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Authored by Eric Lendrum via American Greatness,

Following President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, CNN attempted to issue a fact-check on his claim of government spending on experimentation with transgender mice; the network was subsequently forced to make a retraction.

As the Daily Caller reports, President Trump revealed during the speech – his first address to Congress as the 47th President – that his administration had uncovered $8.2 million in funding at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to use “gender-affirming” treatments on mice. 

CNN’s Deidre McPhillips tried to claim this was false, and that only about $500,000 was spent on these experiments.

“Trump falsely claimed that the Department of Government Efficiency identified government spending of ‘$8 million for making mice transgender,’” said CNN’s original statement.

The White House responded by issuing a statement confirming that the original amount of $8.2 million was accurate.

The statement included a full list of all NIH grants that provided funding for such experimentation on mice. 

• This included $3.1 million to study the role of hormones in mediating sex influences in asthma, 

• $2.5 million on studying the reproductive effects of hormone therapy, 

• and $1.2 million on studies regarding “androgen effects on the reproductive neuroendocrine axis.” 

• Smaller amounts included $735,113 on studies analyzing the impact of hormone therapy on mouse microbiomes, 

• $455,000 to study “gender-affirming hormone therapy on HIV-vaccine induced immune responses,”

• and $299,940 on studying the risks of breast cancer in testosterone therapy. 

• All experiments were conducted on mice.

After the White House rebuttal, CNN updated its fact-check statement by changing the summary from “Trump falsely claimed” to “This claim needs context.”