MRC’s Mandelburg Uses Discredited Website To Justify Her Latest Anti-Transgender Rant

The Media Research Center’s chief transphobe, Tierin-Rose Mandelburg, ranted in a Jan. 30 post:

I hate that this isn’t even the first time MRCTV has had to write about a story like this.

Earlier this month, a Wyoming judge fully revoked Todd and Krista Kolstad’s custody of their 14-year-old daughter after Montana Child Protective Services workers transported the child to Wyoming to treat her for “gender dysphoria.” So now the child has been kidnapped, is on a path of poor mental health and utter delusion and her parents can’t even do anything about it.

Back in April 2023, the Montana legislature, where the Kolstad family resides, passed State Bill 99 which bans the medical transition of minors suffering from “gender dysphoria.” A few months later in August of 2023, the child ended up in the hospital after struggling with bullying and anxiety. Police informed the Kolstad parents that their daughter was suicidal and that a text message indicated that she’d ingested “drain cleaner” and lots of “ibuprofen,” The Gateway Pundit reported Tuesday.

Apparently when the child ended up in the hospital, her toxicology report came back clean. But while there, the girl began asking hospital staff to call her “Leo” and use male pronouns. The staff, despite the objections from the Kolstads, obliged and continued calling the young girl by her name of choice.

“The hospital continued to call our daughter Leo, even though she’s a minor, and after I stated it’s against our wishes, our religion, and our core family values, the hospital told me to call their lawyer if I have an issue, as they will do what the patient tells them,” Mrs. Kolstad said in a video about the situation.

To make matters worse, a non-binary hospital aide talked to “Leo” about top surgery. Though this appeared to be a breach of State Bill 99, the hospital insisted that they were working within a “gray area” as they hadn’t given the child any hormones or surgeries, just encouraged it. 

Yes, Mandelburg is taking the word of the far-right, completely discredited Gateway Pundit, presenting it as a credible source while ignoring that it’s currently being sued by two Georgia election workers for falsely accusing them of adding election ballots from a suitcase.

Mandelburg added that “‘Montana CPS and hospital staff consistently dismissed the Kolstads’ concerns and authority as parents,’ The Gateway Pundit indicated in its report.” In fact, state officials debunked the Kolstads’ entire biased and hateful narrative, led by Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte, to whom the MRC had previously given a pass for assaulting a reporter:

In his Monday posts on X, Gianforte confirmed that his office has reviewed the matter and, without describing the case in detail, said the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services, or DPHHS, acted correctly in taking the child into protective custody.

“To give them their best shot at reaching their full potential, children deserve to grow up in happy, healthy homes with loving families. Sadly, this ideal is not always realized,” the thread said. “… Upon hearing recent allegations related to a child welfare case, I asked Lieutenant Governor Kristen Juras — an experienced attorney, constitutional conservative, mother, and grandmother — to review it. Consulting with the director of DPHHS and personally examining case documents, Lieutenant Governor Juras has concluded that DPHHS and the court have followed state policy and law in their handling of this tragic case. I have asked the lieutenant governor to continue monitoring the case as it progresses.”

In a later statement, the governor’s spokesperson Kaitlin Price clarified that “broadly speaking, the state does not remove minors from homes to provide gender transition services or use taxpayer funds to pay for those services while a minor is in the custody of the state.”

Price also said the governor has asked the state health department to “codify a formal policy and/or develop a regulation to clarify and ensure the definition of abuse or neglect does not include a parent’s right to refuse to provide gender transition services to his or her minor child.”

As we noted when WorldNetDaily columnist Michael Brown tried to seize on this case, the Kolstads’ insistence on running to right-wing media to spew anti-transgender narratives violated confidentiality orders; the judge in the case noted the “unlikelihood of self-reflection and self-accountability or repentance by either father or stepmother.” The parents also refused to permit the state to send the child to an out-of-state facility for treatment of suicidal thoughts, which tells us that they are putting politics ahead of their child’s well-being.

Further, contrary to Mandelburg’s suggestion, “State Bill 99” — actually Senate Bill 99 — is not current law; it has been blocked from taking effect because it’s discriminatory and tramples on privacy rights, so it’s irrelevant for Mandelburg to bring up.

Rather then telling her readers the full story, Mandelburg would trust a discredited website because it hates transgender people as much as she does. That doesn’t exactly make people want to trust anything else the MRC publishes.