There were so many mind-numbing utterances squeezed into President Donald Trump‘s feature-length address to Congress on Tuesday night — which has single-handedly left approximately 50% of Americans in a bad mood for the rest of the week — that somehow it took us a minute to pick up on perhaps his strangest claim of the lot.

Donald Trump claimed in his Congress address that the government spent $8 million "making mice transgender," prompting laughter and controversy. His statement echoed a Republican-backed initiative targeting alleged wasteful research.

The White House released an official statement on Wednesday which doubled down on Trump's transgender mice claims and called out the "fake news losers" at CNN.

Rachel Maddow reacted after Trump stated this week that the Biden administration provided $8 million to scientists in an effort to transgenderize mice.