Daily Wire host Matt Walsh attacked the Republican Party for its role in the Civil War and Reconstruction in a parody campaign ad previously published to the YouTube page that he maintained as co-host of The Matt & Crank Program, a radio show that he co-hosted at WZBH “The Beach” 93.5 FM based in Georgetown, Delaware, from 2010-2011.
Walsh, whose comments supporting teenage pregnancy and political violence have previously been reported by Media Matters, said in the segment that Abraham Lincoln “believed so much in states' rights that he sent hundreds of thousands of federal troops into sovereign states and just started killing everyone.”
In the mock campaign ad for the RNC, Walsh criticized Lincoln for fighting to keep the United States together as a coherent whole after the Confederate states seceded over the right to keep Black people as property, saying, “Lincoln was so adamant about states rights that he would kill to keep states from leaving because he wanted there to be as many states as possible that he could give rights to. … After Lincoln, Republicans continued their tradition of supporting liberty and freedom, like during Reconstruction when they turned the South into military districts and put them under martial law for a decade.” Walsh also attacked “great lord master Reagan” as a “small government conservative” who “was so into shrinking government that he grew it by 90% during his time in office.”
Walsh has a history of racist commentary during his time at WZBH. In other clips published to the YouTube page for Matt & Crank and previously reported by Media Matters, Walsh performed racist impressions of Black men and promoted the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, saying that “as the Anglo-Saxons, which were the original Americans, die off, our identity and our culture goes with it.” Walsh also said that “we probably lost our republic after Reconstruction” in a separate video.
In a promotional clip posted to the Matt & Crank YouTube page, Walsh can be seen riding a pogo stick while wearing a shirt featuring the battle flag of the Confederacy.
Walsh’s trollish attacks on Republican presidents for not being sufficiently reactionary for his taste have also targeted former President Donald Trump, with the Daily Wire host complaining that the former president “handed the country over to Fauci, and fortified the swamp instead of draining it,” and “achieved almost nothing of lasting substance while in office. … Even his SCOTUS picks look like disastrous duds.”
Walsh has also voiced a parody ad for the DNC, adopting a caricature of a gay male voice.
Most recently, Walsh has led a campaign of harassment against children’s hospitals that provide lifesaving gender-affirming care to trans people. On October 21, he is hosting a so-called “Rally to End Child Mutilation” along with U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Tennessee state House Majority Leader William Lamberth, and former Tennessee GOP congressional candidate Robby Starbuck. The rally’s stated goal is to “put a stop to gender ideology’s assault on our children.”
While Walsh smears the medical decisions made by young trans people in consultation with their parents and doctors as an “assault on our children,” in other contexts he has defended pregnancy and marriage for teenage girls, saying, “At about 16, you’re an adult who is mature and can make decisions,” and writing in a blog post, “Adolescence is a state-of-the-art modern innovation. … If we expect 23 year olds to act like they’re 13, then we will get just that.”
