In video shared by Fox News on Monday, Donald Trump again claimed schools around the country are “taking” kids and performing “operations” on them.

“There are some places your boy leaves the school, comes back a girl,” Trump insisted without proof.

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Donald Trump says schools are now almost exclusively teaching kids how to be transgender
He claims he saw “programs” that showed that schools aren’t teaching math or reading anymore, they’re just teaching “transgender.”

“Okay? Without parental consent. What is that all about? That’s like — when they talk about a threat to democracy, they’re a threat,” Trump continued, apparently referring to his Democratic opponent and clearly rattled that her message about his authoritarian nature and cognitive decline are taking hold.

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In a rambling answer to a Bronx dad at what the New York Post described as a “surprise” visit to a barbershop packed with Black men who support Trump, the former president, slumped in a barber chair, held forth incoherently on his solution for problems at America’s schools: stopping teachers and administrators from transitioning kids.

All of this was in response to the dad’s question about how Trump would help Bronx public schools perform better – the dad didn’t mention trans kids at all.

“Could you imagine without parental consent? At first, what I was told that was actually happening, I said, you know, it’s an exaggeration. No. It happens! It happens in areas where it happens. We’re not going to let it happen, but we are going to straighten out a lot,” Trump said, untethered from the facts or syntax.

Trump also added his stock answer of all but eliminating the Department of Education, claiming he’d abolish every job at the Cabinet-level agency save the head of the department and a secretary for the Secretary.

“We’re moving them back from Washington, where you have people that don’t care about New York, frankly,” Trump told his Bronx questioner. “You know, in Washington, I don’t know if you ever noticed that you got Department of Education, Department of Education. You got half the buildings are Department of Education.”

“I never saw – you don’t need any of them. You know, I want one person and a secretary to just make sure they’re teaching English. Okay. Give a little English,” he said. “Okay? I say reading, writing, and arithmetic. No transgender, no operations.”

The sputtering appearance was just one in a week marked by the Republican nominee’s deteriorating campaign performances. Earlier in the week, Trump swayed to his Spotify playlist at a rally in Pennsylvania for close to 40 minutes, gesturing along to favorites like “Ave Maria” and “Memory” from Cats. On Sunday, Trump donned a Dukakis-worthy hat and McDonald’s apron to work the frier and hand out free orders to fake drive-thru customers at a closed restaurant location. At a rally in Detroit, an 18-minute microphone malfunction left the 78-year-old fuming and wandering the stage.

The faux “surprise” visit at Knockout Barber in The Bronx Thursday — hosted spontaneously if you believe the campaign’s claim by “Fox & Friends” co-host Lawrence Jones — had “customers” waiting in the shop during a security lockdown from 9:30 in the morning until Trump staggered in at 4 p.m.

Adding to the surreality at the barbershop: a clip reveals one barber shearing the neckline of a stand-in customer for thirty seconds, but not cutting his hair at all, one more clue to the staged nature of the supposedly spontaneous campaign stop.