Matt Walsh
This content was last updated Oct. 4, 2023, 7:16 a.m. UTC
Matt Walsh is an American conservative podcaster, anti-transgender activist, author, and self-described theocratic fascist from the Nashville, Tennessee area. He is best known as the host of podcast The Matt Walsh Show and the interviewer in The Daily Wire’s anti-transgender documentary What Is a Woman?
A child who is put on hormones, then who has their body mutilated, is being sexually violated in a way that is just as depraved and damaging as molestation or rape. All of these kids are sexual abuse victims, and their abusers are people like [Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy]. She's like a pedophile. That's how she should be treated and seen.
Media Career
Walsh began working in media in early 2010 as the co-host of an FM radio show, The Matt and Crank Program, on radio station WZBH in Georgetown, Delaware. Most notable from this period of his career are Walsh’s earliest calls to political violence, in which he derided far-right Tea Party protestors by suggesting that “extreme change” could only be achieved by “[making] people hurt.” In addition, he advocated for teenage pregnancy and the white nationalist conspiracy “replacement theory.”
In August of 2011, Walsh left WZBH to join smaller station WGMD, where he worked for less than a year. In December of 2013, Walsh announced that he was leaving radio broadcast to focus on his blog, the earliest iteration of The Matt Walsh Show, after his show at Kentucky broadcast station WLAP was canceled.
Walsh became a staff writer for Glenn Beck’s conservative pop culture news outlet TheBlaze, now Blaze Media, in October of 2014; contributed to HuffPost between 2014 and 2017; and joined Ben Shapiro’s conservative news outlet The Daily Wire in October of 2017.
Walsh is also the author of anti-LGBTQ+ books like The Unholy Trinity: Blocking the Left's Assault on Life, Marriage, and Gender, Church of Cowards: A Wake-Up Call to Complacent Christians, and Johnny the Walrus, an anti-transgender children’s book that was temporarily mistakenly categorized by Amazon as an LGBTQ+ book.
The Matt Walsh Show
Walsh began blogging political commentary through The Matt Walsh Blog in November of 2012. His blog would act as a forerunner to the political commentary and personal thoughts he started sharing via podcast The Matt Walsh Show on YouTube in April of 2018, also hosted by The Daily Wire.
Walsh’s podcast has attracted considerable media attention due to his frequently inflammatory statements in videos and tweets. He has claimed that gay priests, not pedophiles, are to blame for the abuse of children in the Catholic church; that the Islamophobic “great replacement theory” is not a conspiracy, but a fact; and that white supremacists don’t exist.
In December of 2022, The Matt Walsh Show was syndicated for radio broadcast by Westwood One, replacing Ben Shapiro’s one-hour talk show. In April of 2023, Walsh’s YouTube channel was demonitized for repeatedly misgendering transgender TikTok maker Dylan Mulvaney. Refusing to gender Mulvaney correctly, Walsh instead relocated his podcast to The Daily Wire’s website.
What Is a Woman?
In June of 2022, Walsh and The Daily Wire released an anti-transgender documentary titled What Is a Woman?, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to promote the film on social media platforms.
The film features commentary from transgender people, likely solicited under false pretenses. In February of 2022, transgender activist Eli Erlick exposed Walsh and far-right director Justin Folk for reaching out to her for an interview through a producer of the film, “Makenna Lynn,” or Makenna Waters, on behalf of fictionalized company Gender Unity Project. The domain name for Gender Unity Project was parked on December 5th, 2021, then populated with content sometime before Erlick was contacted. The website has since been deleted.
Also claiming to have been approached under false pretenses for Walsh’s film were transgender mixed martial artists Fallon Fox and Alanna McLaughlin, and activist Debi Jackson and her transgender 14-year-old daughter Avery.
In June of 2023, Twitter owner Elon Musk retweeted a free copy of the film and said that “every parent should watch this.” The tweet has been seen by tens of millions of people. Prior to this, Musk backtracked a decision by Twitter to avoid providing support for the film and limit its reach on the social media platform, despite the fact that misgendering was at the time against Twitter’s Terms of Service.
Further resources:
- Walsh's blog
- Walsh's IMDb page
- Walsh's YouTube account
- Walsh's Instagram
- Walsh's Twitter
- Walsh's Facebook page
- Walsh's TikTok Account