CNN Fact-Checker Daniel Dale Harasses Innocent Survivor of Childhood Trauma

Daniel Dale, CNN's indefatigable guardian of truth, is harassing an innocent victim of online radicalism, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

Dale recently contacted Soren Aldaco, a 23-year-old survivor of so-called gender-affirming care, who appeared in two GOP-affiliated ads targeting former Democratic senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio. He accused the innocent victim of lying about her lived experience, and claimed the deeply personal truth she expressed in the ads was "deceptive."

Worst of all, the CNN journalist committed what some experts would describe as literally an act of violence by subjecting Aldaco to the emotional labor of revisiting her trauma under duress.

"Hi Soren, I'm a CNN fact-check reporter," Dale wrote in an email. "I'm looking into some ads across the country that accuse Democratic candidates of having supported sex-change surgeries for minors. Two of the ones I'm looking at are the [Senate Leadership Fund] ads in Ohio featuring your story."

Dale argued the ads were "deceptive" for "strongly suggesting" that Soren underwent sex-change surgery as a minor, when actually she was almost old enough to buy alcohol. As Aldaco previously explained in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, she got a double mastectomy, or "top surgery," at age 19 without her parents' consent. She started hormone therapy at 17, after years of exposure to "coercive" gender ideology—including a doctor's professional opinion—had convinced her she was "born in the wrong body."

Aldaco suffered "major complications" from the surgery. She eventually needed an emergency operation to remove blood clots. That's when she realized she had been "gaslit" by radicals "disguising harm as compassion." But as Dale, the fact expert, pointed out so astutely in his email, Aldaco was legally old enough to make her own decisions and deal with the consequences.

Some context: The Free Beacon was accused of racist bullying for asking the 53-year-old president of Harvard University why so much of her published research was plagiarized. More recently, even left-wing journalists were accused of driving a widely celebrated Cambridge professor, Jason Arday, to suicide by pointing out that he was a massive fraud.

Dale's work focuses almost exclusively on people who criticize Democrats, from Donald Trump and GOP congressmen to MAGA bodybuilders and "conservative tweeters." He is greatly admired in his field, obviously.

More context: Expressing regret about a sex-change operation is one of the only situations—apart from voting—in which a CNN journalist would ever suggest a 19-year-old is mature enough to make life-altering decisions.

In May, the network warned that giving 18-to-21-year-olds access to prediction markets such as Kalshi could "fuel a public health crisis" because their brains aren't "fully developed." CNN's Dana Bash made the same argument in 2022 during a segment on age restrictions for gun purchases, citing the National Institutes of Health. In 2020, CNN raised concern about whether a convicted murderer should be executed for crimes he committed when he was 19, an age when research has shown that our brains are still "developmentally immature."

Perhaps voters are mature enough to judge for themselves if Aldaco is being "deceptive." Here's what she actually said in the ads:

• "At 11, I was groomed by strangers online. At 15, a doctor told my family I was transgender. Hormone injections, then surgery without my parents' consent. I was a kid. I was confused."

• "After a 20-minute meeting, doctors told my parents I was transgender. That led to hormone shots, a botched double mastectomy, and years of trauma. I wasn't born in the wrong body. I was a kid." 

The ads contend that Sherrod Brown "supports sex change surgery for minors." Dale's fellow truth mavens at PolitiFact have already rated this "false." That's why fact-checkers exist. So Democrats can cite their expert opinions in new ads accusing Republicans of lying.

PolitiFact couldn't find any "evidence" that Brown supports sex change operations for minors. In other words, he's never talked about how great they are or expressed a desire to watch them. He's just said he would "never agree" with legislation that would ban or limit them in any way. At least, that's what Brown and other Democrats actually mean when they don't want to "bring politics" into the "family situation" of deciding whether children can change genders.

More than 70 percent of Americans disagree.

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