This GOP candidate got duped by a bizarre hoax – and ranted about it during a campaign stop

Scott Jensen, a Republican running for governor of Minnesota, claimed last week that children are being told they can identify as anthropomorphic cats and are being allowed to use litter boxes to urinate in schools. But as CNN points out, he was just regurgitating a hoax.

“But what about education?” Jensen said in a video posted to Facebook last month. “What are we doing to our kids? Why are we telling elementary kids that they get to choose their gender this week? Why do we have litter boxes in some of the school districts so kids can pee in them, because they identify as a furry? We’ve lost our minds. We’ve lost our minds.”

"Furries" are peoplewho sometimes dress up as anthropomorphic animal characters.

"The claim reportedly originated from a community member at a local school board meeting last year and has since spread across the internet," CNN's report stated. "They havebeen repeatedly shotdown by fact-checkers from major news outlets as false. The bizarre conspiracy has spread so much that it even has its own dedicated Wikipedia page."