Anti-trans activist Matt Walsh presents “evidence” that Michelle Obama is actually a man

Arch transphobe Matt Walsh denied calling Michelle Obama a man on a on a recent episode of his Daily Wire show, while at the same time snidely implying that she is one.

The far-right host opened Wednesday’s episode of The Matt Walsh Show with a rant about NewsGuard, a site that rates online news outlets based on the accuracy and trustworthiness of their reporting and commentary. Walsh claimed that a NewsGuard factchecker had recently contacted him with questions about his August 23 appearance on Daily Wire Backstage, which the factchecker incorrectly described as a “bonus special segment” on the August 24 episode of The Matt Walsh Show. The fact checker quoted Walsh as saying “Michelle Obama is a man,” and asked for the host to clarify why he made the claim.

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A clip from the Daily Wire Backstage episode, which Walsh played later, does indeed show the host saying the words “Michelle Obama is a man.” However, he was reading off of a card from a conspiracy theory card game. He did go on to say that he is “increasingly convinced that there is some validity to” the claim, as co-hosts Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, and Michael Knowles laughed.

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On Wednesday’s show, Walsh attempted to brush the discussion off as a joke. “I’m not going to get into the various high-quality sources I was relying on when I made my remarks, which were obviously serious in every possible respect,” Walsh said in a snide tone before rolling the August 23 clip.

However, he then went on to suggest there is, in fact, evidence to back up the false conspiracy theory.

“I’m not going to talk about how Michelle Obama conspicuously doesn’t list her pronouns in her Twitter bio, even though most prominent Democrats including AOC and Pete Buttigieg are proudly doing so,” he said. “I’m not going to talk about broad shoulders or deep voices or a weird lack of baby pictures or anything like that. I’m certainly not going to show you the footage of Ted Nugent’s infamous discussion with Kyle Rittenhouse from back in April where he outlined some of his own observations and the evidence that he has found that Michelle Obama is a man. I’m not gonna show you any of that. I deeply hope that you don’t look up that footage for yourself, which you can find on YouTube or Twitter.”

While there is zero evidence that the former first lady is a transgender woman, the conspiracy theory, which dates back to at least 2008 according to fact-checking site Snopes, has seen a resurgence this year on the far-right. In January, Newsweek reported on several Republican politicians and commentators who had revived the claim on Twitter (now known as X).

As Snopes notes, right-wing podcaster Jason Whitlock devoted a segment of his show to the conspiracy theory in June. That same month, a photo of a young Barack and Michelle Obama, which had been altered to make the former First Lady look like a young man, appeared on social media.

Then, in August, Donald Trump Jr. fanned the flames of the rumor by suggesting on his podcast, Triggered, that he had never seen a photo of Obama taken during either of her pregnancies. The following month, AI-generated photos of a pregnant Obama appeared on social media.