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Ariana Baio
Nov 08, 2022
US conservative Matt Walsh claims that he would 'rather have kids in …
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Right-wing political commentator Matt Walsh falsely stated that "millions" of young people are on hormone blockers as he pushed an anti-transgender agenda on The Joe Rogan Experience.
On Monday, Walsh appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast, where he and Rogan spoke about gender identity, specifically in children.
Walsh notoriously pushes anti-transgender rights rhetoric on his platforms. In the past, he has called medical care for transgender people "abuse."
Earlier this year he wrote an anti-transgender children's book.
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So when speaking about the topic, he confidently stated that "millions" of people under the age of 18 were on hormone-blocking drugs.
"I'm sure someone is going to fact-check me on this but my guess is that we're into the millions now at this point," Walsh told Rogan.
Moments later, Rogan's team did fact-check Walsh where they found only 4,780 adolescents were on hormone blockers in the last five years.
\u201cMatt Walsh and Joe Rogan spent an entire segment calling trans people narcists, saying gay marriage shouldn't be legal, and arguing for detransitioning trans youth.\n\nBut even Rogan couldn't let a claim like "millions of youth are on puberty blockers" slide\n\n(actual number: 4,780)\u201d— Erin Reed (@Erin Reed) 1667862451
Walsh responded by lowering his estimate to "hundreds of thousands" but added that he "could be wrong."
On Twitter, people criticized Walsh for exaggerating the number of transgender young people on hormone blockers.
"I’m glad Rogan actually fact-checked this. But it’s astounding that someone who talks about this issue for a living wouldn’t be better informed. Is that really too much to ask?" Patrick tweeted.
"How is it possible to know so little about the thing you've gotten yourself so worked up over," a Twitter user wrote.
\u201cMatt Walsh caught brazenly lying to feed his moral panic. There are 71 million people in the US under the age of 18. Only around a thousand trans youth a year start puberty blockers. That's 0.00661% of all youth. You could fit all trans youth on puberty blockers in a high school.\u201d— Alejandra Caraballo (@Alejandra Caraballo) 1667911890
Walsh also told Rogan that the number of transgender youth having gender-affirming top surgery has had an "exponential increase" in the last couple of years, despite a lack of concrete statistics in the world.
\u201cSuper interesting. Despite wide documentation that sexual reassignment surgery on minors is incredibly rare, Matt Walsh insists it's probably hundreds of thousands per year despite seeing the data. This guy has made a living as the "expert" on these issues for the right wing.\u201d— David Pakman (@David Pakman) 1667918358
Upon learning his statistic was incorrect Walsh joked that "Media Matters will have fun with that clip" referencing the left-leaning media watchdog group.
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