Thread by @RTodKelly

So this is interesting. If you've been on twitter over the past few days, you've probably seen this claim that the CDC has been spending its money lately on "transgender beauty pageants." Michelle Malkin covered it for RCP, and Laura Ingraham covers it here.

So what's the deal?

https://twitter.com/JasonSCampbell/status/1262572786754740224

2/ Did the CDC spend its time this past 6 months holding high-end transgender beauty pageants while a pandemic was raging? Because is that's the case, it does sound pretty damning. So, again - what's the deal?

It turns out the deal is... less clear.

3/ The "source" for this claim is an audit by Tom Corburn, a United States Senator from Oklahoma, who died in March of this year.

No, it might seem suspicious that someone who just uncovered the CDC using funds to hold transgender beauty pageants died so soon after the audit.

4/ Except it turns out the audit Ingraham and Malkin are using is from - I shit you not - mid-2007, almost a decade and a half ago.

Coburn was an interesting guy. Before he was a Senator, hw as an obstetrician. The state of OK claimed that he committed Medicaid fraud

5/ shall we say, unnecessary sterilization on a patient without her knowledge or consent. He also tired to make political hay out of the movie Schindler's List, which Coburn found unnecessarily erotic with its ""irresponsible sexual behavior."

He was, to put it succinctly,

6/ a mean who marched to a very different drummer than most of us.

But back to the 2007 audit.

The audit notes that the CDC paid for a porn star and a transgender beauty contest. It turns out that this is true... sort of.

7/ Coburn discovered that in 2002 - half a decade before his audit - the CDC offered a grant to an org called Blacks Assisting Blacks Against AIDS, which in a public even did indeed feature a porn star talking about AIDS. What Ingraham and Malkin do not mention, however, is that

8/ the CDC objected, and the money was reimbursed by Blacks Assisting Blacks Against AIDS in 2002.

So, to be transparent, in 2002 the CDC realized $500 of its grant money was being paid to a pornstar to talk about infectious diseases, the CDC objected, and the money was returned

9/ Which , you know, is not perfect, but hardly a smoking gun for why the CDC scientists should all be disregarded in 2020, right?

But they, there's still that transgender beauty pageant, right? That seems like reason to disregard scientists! So what's the deal with that?

10. Glad you asked. The grant, as it turns out, was actually to put on a transgender beauty contest - though there was a connection.

In 2001 - seriously, I shit you not, 2001 - The United Territories of Polynesian Islanders’ Alliance put on an LGBTQ event to raise awareness

11/ about AIDS - which, for those or you who are too young to remember, was still a thing that terrified everyone in 2001. The event encouraged AIDS testing for gays and people who were transgender. They applied for a grant to the CDC to do the testing, and the grant

12/ was approved, and testing was done.

That's it. That's the connection Fox News and Michelle Malkin are making between CDC officials who have the audacity to disagree with President Trump's off the cuff science guesses and funding transgender beauty pageants and porn stars.

13/ If you want to read Coburn's audit for 2007 - freaking 2007!!! - here it is. It reads like.. like...

Like someone who worried kids would find Schinlders list overly erotic, I guess.

cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/cdc…

14/ Super weird everyone talking about this isn't mentioning where the info is from, who "brought it to light," of when it happened.

I wonder why that it.

/end rant

* was NOT to put on a beauty pageant