Matt Walsh (born June 18, 1986)[1][2] is an American right-wing political commentator, author and activist.[3] He is the host of The Matt Walsh Show podcast and is a columnist for the American conservative website The Daily Wire. He has authored four books and starred in The Daily Wire online documentary film What Is a Woman?.
In 2010, Walsh began his career as a talk radio host for two stations in Delaware, before moving to Kentucky and launching his own website in 2012.[4] He left WLAP in Kentucky when his show was cancelled in December 2013 and joined Blaze Media in 2014.[5] He joined The Daily Wire in 2017, and began hosting The Matt Walsh Show in 2018.[6] Walsh has appeared on several nationally syndicated publications and talk shows.[7][8]
Walsh began his career as a talk radio co-host of The Matt and Crank Program at WZBH 93.5 FM in Georgetown, Delaware, from early 2010 to August 1, 2011, and then moved to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, with WGMD 92.7 FM later that month, where he worked for less than a year.[4][17] In 2012, he moved to Lexington, Kentucky, joining NewsRadio 630 WLAP[citation needed] and launching a website, The Matt Walsh Blog, in which he discussed various issues from a conservative point of view.[5] Walsh announced in December 2013 that he was "leaving radio forever" to focus on blogging after his show was canceled.[4][5]
Walsh hosted The Matt Walsh Show on YouTube starting in April 2018 on weekdays; it is an hour in length.[6] According to Walsh, the show made $100,000 per month through advertisement revenue. Walsh announced in April 2023 that the show was being moved to the Daily Wire website after his YouTube channel was demonetized for repeatedly misgendering transgender woman Dylan Mulvaney.[26]
Walsh's work has been supported by J. K. Rowling,[27]Elon Musk,[28][29] and some Republican legislators.[30][31] Rowling argued that Walsh's work "exposed" the "incoherence of gender identity."[32]
In 2023, Walsh starred in a Daily Wire comedy film, Lady Ballers, which debuted on December 1, 2023. He portrayed the character of Kris Dilby, a woke beatnik.[33]
On March 29, 2022, DW Books published Walsh's children's book Johnny the Walrus, which compares being trans to identifying as a walrus.[13]
Fox News host Tucker Carlson called the book "hilarious".[34] Conservative news website TheBlaze called the book "an effort to push back against radical gender ideology which defies biological reality".[35] The satirist Andrew Doyle, writing in UnHerd, praised the book for mocking the "indoctrination of the young".[36]LGBTQ Nation denounced the book, calling it "anti-transgender" and a mockery of transgender youth, while PinkNews referred to it as "hateful" and "transphobic".[34][35] It was listed as the bestselling LGBT+ book on Amazon in December 2021 before Amazon recategorized it to Political and Social Commentary. Walsh called the recategorization "an unconscionable attack on gay rights and a horrific example of homophobia and gay erasure". Target removed the book from its online bookstore on the same day.[37]
Walsh's online documentary film What Is a Woman?, released by The Daily Wire on June 1, 2022, at the beginning of Pride Month, featured Walsh asking the question "what is a woman?" to various people, and arguing for his own views.[44] Walsh had asked the same question in other appearances, including a Dr. Phil show on January 19, 2022, with transgender and non-binary people.[45][46] On June 14, Walsh published a book based on the documentary, entitled What Is a Woman?: One Man's Journey to Answer the Question of a Generation through DW Books.[47]
Eventbrite banned screenings of the documentary due to the service not permitting content that promotes "hate, violence, or harassment towards others and/or oneself". Walsh denied that the documentary was hate speech and criticized Eventbrite for permitting the screening of drag shows that allow children in attendance.[52]
In February 2022, Eli Erlick, a transgender activist, alleged that Walsh had invited dozens of people to participate in the documentary under false pretenses.[53][54]Kataluna Enriquez, Fallon Fox, and other transgender public figures corroborated the account. Walsh created a group called the Gender Unity Project, which the activists said attempted to lure them into participating in the film.[54][55] The Gender Unity Project's Twitter account and website[56] were taken down shortly after the allegations went public.[57] Erlick claimed there were at least 50 other recruited interviewees, including a 14-year-old transgender girl.[57][58][59]
For June Pride Month of 2023, The Daily Wire made What is a Woman? available for free on Twitter. The Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing tweeted that Twitter had canceled a plan to promote the video, reportedly because of misgendering, and said the video was being suppressed. Twitter CEO Elon Musk initially agreed to lift only some restrictions, but after pressure removed all restrictions and personally promoted the video.[64][65] Chiefs of Twitter's trust and safety division left the company on the same day.[64] The film's tally on Twitter showed more than 62 million views (previously known as impressions[66]) as of the afternoon of June 2 and 177 million for the week.[64][67] Walsh called Musk's promotion of the film a "huge win".[65]
Regarding the casting of Halle Bailey in the live-action version of The Little Mermaid (2023), Walsh said on The Daily Wire, "from a scientific perspective, it doesn't make a lot of sense to have someone with darker skin who lives deep in the ocean," and suggested that the mermaid should be translucent instead. Walsh's commentary was mocked on CNN by digital senior entertainment writer Lisa France, who said "racism is real, unfortunately, and people get so offended".[87] Later, Walsh said that "Translucent rights are human rights".[88] He jokingly called anime "satanic" in an answer to viewers' questions in one of his videos, adding "I have no argument for why it's satanic. It just seems that way to me."[89][90] He has called multiculturalism a "failed experiment".[91][third-party source needed].
LGBT issues
Walsh is an opponent of the LGBT rights movement and the LGBT community, in particular the transgender rights movement and the idea of being transgender in general.[13][92]
In February 2021, after a Gallup poll showed a sharp increase of people who identify as LGBT, especially bisexual and transgender, in Generation Z compared to previous generations, Walsh accused "the media, Hollywood, and the school system" of recruiting children into the LGBT community. Other commentators quoted by PinkNews argued that Walsh was wrong, attributing the increase to different factors, including an easing of social stigmas among younger people.[93]
Shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, Walsh accused President Joe Biden of feminizing the U.S. military and recruiting lesbians who he said "can't do three pushups", and said that it was "not a coincidence that [Russia's invasion] happened after Biden spent his first year in office focusing primarily on wokeness".[94]
The New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg argued that Walsh's commentary, as well as that of other right-wing commentators, have caused an increase of anti-LGBT violence and sentiment in the United States.[95]The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) described Walsh as one of the "peddlers of fear and disinformation about LGBTQ people" in the wake of the Club Q mass shooting in November 2022.[96] Walsh had previously said opposing all-age drag events was like fighting cancer,[75] and "just like cancer, stopping it is not a gentle or a painless process".[95][97] Following the shooting, Walsh lambasted critics of his rhetoric as "soulless demons" and "evil to the core", accusing them of using the shooting to "blackmail us into accepting the castration and sexualization of children".[98][99] He also rhetorically asked those on the left who felt that "the drag queen-child combination" would lead to "violent backlash" from right-wingers, "if it's causing this much chaos and violence, why do you insist on continuing to do it?"[100][101]Jeet Heer from The Nation described Walsh's comments, along with those of a few other right-wing figures, as "implicitly a threat," saying, "The right is trying to create a new lynching culture, with LGBTQ people as the target."[101]
In April 2023, Walsh defended Uganda's anti-homosexuality bill, arguing that LGBTQ rights in Africa were a form of neocolonialism. The bill would enforce life in prison for anybody identifying as gay or bisexual. Walsh argued that opponents to the bill "don't think that Uganda has any particular right to govern itself and have its own culture and its own way of life."[102]
Walsh has repeatedly opposed the transgender community[13] and "gender ideology",[103] notably with his children's book Johnny the Walrus,[13] his documentary What Is a Woman?,[54] and campaigns involving hospitals and schools.[9][104] Walsh and his campaigns are sometimes described as anti-trans and transphobic.[68][59][43][60] Progressive magazine The New Republic named Walsh "Transphobe of the Year" in 2022, saying he "has made a name for himself by demonizing medical professionals and pushing conspiracy theories about 'grooming' and pedophilia in the LGBTQ community".[68] Walsh has referred to being transgender as a "delusion" and a "mental illness".[63] He has also argued that transgender people cannot "defend the logic of trans ideology" and that they have "embarked on a campaign to restructure all of human society".[103] Walsh argues that biological sex is what determines if someone is a man or a woman.[103] He has said that "I truly see the fight against gender ideology as the last stand for Western civilization ... Because if the sane side loses this, it's over."[103]
Walsh has compared giving hormone treatments and gender reassignment surgery for transgender youth to "being sexually violated in a way that is just as depraved or damaging as molestation or rape". In May 2021, Walsh called doctors who perform gender-reassignment surgeries for transgender youth "Nazi scientist-evil", "pedophiles", and "plastic surgeons basically acting like Leatherface from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre".[15][13] Walsh's views are in opposition to the stance of leading American medical groups, which have established guidelines to treat transgender youth; those groups and some research say that denying such care can lead to higher rates of suicide and other mental health issues.[9][71] He has also referred to these surgeries as "castration".[103]
Walsh rented an apartment in Virginia for one day in 2021 to qualify to speak out against the Loudoun County School Board for allowing transgender students the use of restrooms matching their gender identity.[104] During his speech, which he later featured in his film What Is a Woman?, Walsh said: "You are all child abusers. You prey upon impressionable children and indoctrinate them into your insane ideological cult, a cult which holds many fanatical views but none so deranged as the idea that boys are girls and girls are boys."[43]
In January 2022, Twitter suspended Walsh's account for 12 hours for tweets it deemed as hateful content against transgender people.[105][better source needed] In October 2022, Walsh encouraged his followers to misgender transgender people, writing that "we have made huge strides against the trans agenda", and that the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk, which he called "the liberation of Twitter", will allow them to "ramp up our efforts even more".[72]
In November 2022, Walsh was challenged as a guest on the podcast The Joe Rogan Experience for suggesting that "maybe millions of kids" had been put onto puberty blockers. Producer Jamie Vernon interjected and stated that only 4,780 children had been put on puberty blockers within the past five years. Walsh lowered his guess to "hundreds of thousands" and said he "could be wrong", adding, "who are you gonna trust when they're telling you the numbers?"[25]
Campaign against Eli Erlick
In August 2022, Walsh accused transgender activist Eli Erlick of being a "confessed drug dealer" targeting children because of a deleted Instagram post in which she proposed sending surplus hormone therapy prescriptions—including hundreds of doses of testosterone, estradiol, and spironolactone—to transgender youth for free within states attempting to criminalize transgender healthcare for minors. Walsh reported her to the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she was a PhD candidate. When the university did not respond to Walsh's report within a day, he said it was "time to escalate" and shared the contact information of various leaders of the university, while threatening to further escalate to the Board of Trustees, the university's donors, and to organize a protest on campus if the university continued to not respond.[106][10] The university said it "strongly supports transgender members of our community" and "takes allegations of illegal activity seriously, harassment included". Some conservative commentators reported Erlick to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.[10] Erlick claimed to never face investigation.[107][third-party source needed]
Following Walsh's statements Erlick reported harassment on social media, including messages with anti-LGBT slurs and threats of physical violence. Erlick accused Walsh of "profiting from the moral panic over transness", "attacking free speech itself", and stochastic terrorism, which is incitement of violence against a target through mass media with plausible deniability. Walsh denied that his actions constituted stochastic terrorism and argued that sharing public contact information is not harassment.[10]
Campaigns against hospitals providing transgender health care
In 2022, Walsh campaigned against hospitals providing transgender health care for youth.[9][108]Boston Children's Hospital, one of the hospitals denounced by Walsh and other right-wing figures, reported harassment, death threats, and a hoax bomb threat in August 2022 that led to a woman's arrest in September.[9][71][109]
In September 2022, Walsh made accusations against another hospital, Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), and its transgender clinic in Nashville, Tennessee.[16][9] Walsh said on his show that VUMC doctors "castrate" and "drug and mutilate" children.[110] He said on Twitter that VUMC considered transgender health care a "money-maker", that it threatened "consequences" for medical staff who declined to provide care, and that it tried to "enforce compliance" from hesitant parents of transgender youth.[9][16] Walsh criticized VUMC's "trans buddies" program and called its patient advocates "trans activists".[111]The New Republic described the accusations by Walsh as "cherry-picking informational content" and noted that Walsh had singled out doctors by name.[108]Tennessee GovernorBill Lee and other Republicans in the state called for an investigation into the hospital.[16][111] Walsh tweeted about meeting with Tennessee lawmakers on a bill to shut down the clinic.[108] VUMC reported harassment and threats against its staff, and there were calls for murders and arrests of VUMC doctors in far-right groups on Reddit and 4chan.[9] Vanderbilt took down its webpage about the clinic and said that Walsh had "misrepresent[ed] facts about the care" it provides.[9] On October 7, 2022, VUMC announced that it would pause gender-affirming surgeries for minors and review its practices.[112] Since 2018, VUMC provided an average of five such surgeries to minors annually. All patients were over 16-years-old and obtained parental consent. None have received genital surgery.[112]
Walsh spoke at a Nashville rally organized by The Daily Wire called "The Rally to End Child Mutilation" on October 21, 2022, in opposition to transgender health care for minors. The rally, whose headline speakers included Tennessee Republican state senator Jack Johnson and representative William Lamberth, senator Marsha Blackburn, and former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, drew between 1,500 and 3,000 people, including supporters and protesters.[31][11]
Politicians
After South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem permitted businesses to require a COVID-19 vaccine for their employees, Walsh criticized her by writing that she was only considered a frontrunner for the 2024 United States presidential election because of her physical attractiveness.[3] After Noem called his comment misogynistic, Walsh said he had no regrets but would "accept apologies from all of the performative idiots pretending to be offended by it".[113][better source needed]
When U.S. representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted photos of her grandmother's house in Puerto Rico that was unrepaired in 2021, four years after Hurricane Maria, and blamed former President Donald Trump for not doing enough to help the recovery, Walsh criticized Ocasio-Cortez for not providing the money herself. He launched a crowdfunding effort to pay for the repairs and raised $100,000 in the first 24 hours, reaching the set goal of $48,990, but the grandmother refused the funds and GoFundMe shut the effort down after raising $104,000, with all of the money being returned to the donors. Ocasio-Cortez responded to the criticism by saying, "My abuela (Spanish: "grandmother") is okay ... but instead of only caring for mine & letting others suffer, I'm calling attention to the systemic injustices you seem totally fine [with] in having a US colony."[114]
St. Francis Xavier College Church, at Saint Louis University, canceled a speech by Walsh that it had planned to co-host with Young Americans for Freedom in December 2021. The church said it had decided that Walsh's "provocative positions on immigration, on communities of color, on Muslims, and on members of the LGBTQ community" were "in contradiction to Jesus' great commandment to love God and love our neighbor".[116][117] Walsh subsequently spoke at a different St. Louis venue.[118]
In 2023, the University of San Diego, a private Catholic educational institution, refused Walsh permission to speak on campus, for the reason that they regarded his opinions as "Grossly Offensive".[119]
^Walsh, Matt (April 3, 2019). Fine, I Am A Theocratic Fascist. YouTube. DailyWire+. Retrieved December 10, 2022. It does say in my Twitter bio that I'm a theocratic fascist, well because a few months ago someone sent me a message, trying to insult me, and the message said: 'hey, y'know, you should put theocratic fascist in your Twitter bio because that's what you are.'
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