Matt Walsh Rages at Fox News for Airing Segment on Trans Teen, Says Employees Involved Should be ‘Named, Shamed, and Fired’
Matt Walsh, a right-wing political commentator and Daily Wire host, blasted Fox News Monday for running a segment on a trans teen and his family.
“Fourteen-year-old Ryland Whittington is a typical southern California teenager. And the Whittingtons along with his mom, dad, and sister are a typical family. The only difference in Ryland’s eyes is what this family can mean to the tens of thousands of kids under 18 who identify as transgender,” said Fox News correspondent Bryan Llenas, introducing his interview with the family last Friday.
Walsh, whom Rolling Stone recently described as transphobic, has been on a tear against the trans community in recent months and just dropped a new documentary called What Is a Woman?
Walsh addressed Fox’s coverage of 14-year-old Ryland Whittington on his podcast Monday.
“Speaking of legitimizing choices after the fact, nobody at Fox has explained how this toxic nonsense ended up on the airwaves,” he began.
“I know for a fact that many of the people who work at Fox do not agree with this, do not want to be associated with it. But a decision was made by somebody to do this report and air it,” he continued.
In fact, the interview was part of a series aired by the network called “America Together: LGBTQ+ Pride Month.” Fox News Media Senior VP Michael Tammero interviewed long-term AIDS survivor Rev. Dr. Steve Pieters, whose 1985 sit-down with Tammy Faye Bakker helped to de-stigmatize the disease, in the first installment of the series, which ran last Monday.
“All the parties involved should explain themselves and then they should be fired also,” Walsh continued.
“Oh, are you promoting cancel culture? You want to cancel these people? Absolutely. I want to cancel them, yes,” he raged, adding,
They should be fired for sure. Named, shamed, and fired. When you put dishonest. Trans, militant-trans propaganda on the airwaves.
That’s going to do and is doing immeasurable harm to thousands of kids, then you know, you should be fired for that.
“Fox speaks largely to a conservative audience, and nobody in the audience wants any part of this,” Walsh argued.
“Of all the people that were watching Fox on that Friday when when that report aired. How many of them wanted that? So this is propaganda made by and for an audience that doesn’t watch Fox and hates Fox and especially hates Fox’s actual audience,” Walsh added, appearing not understand the definition of propaganda, which would rarely challenge the audiences’ accepted opinions.
“If Fox News wants to call itself news, then it cannot put insane falsehoods and radical far-left lies and propaganda on the air if you want to be a news organization. Especially this kind of propaganda, worst of all, propaganda which aims to exploit and destroy children,” Walsh raged.
During the segment on Fox, Ryland’s mother describes her child coming out, saying,
I could see it. It wasn’t him trying to be a brat. It was like painful. It was painful for him to have to wear feminine clothing and for us constantly telling him that you are a girl.
“So, Fox’s audience has to call the network to account. I mean, nothing less than a full retraction and apology should be accepted here,” Walsh concluded.
Notable in the Fox News segment were statistics and a discussion of how common “self-harm” and suicide is among trans youth, something Walsh did not address.
“I would rather have a living son than a dead daughter. I guarantee if we had pushed back and done what a lot of parents do, I don’t think we would have either one of the kids that you see before you here today,” said Ryland’s mother in the Fox News segment.
