Right-wing troll Matt Walsh bragged to Fox News on Tuesday night about circumventing a Virginia school board’s rules just so he could deliver a transphobic speech at a meeting, acknowledging that he pretended to be a local resident in order to deliver his attention-seeking rant.
Walsh, who hosts a podcast for Ben Shapiro’s right-wing website The Daily Wire, took to Facebook last week to proclaim that he would lead a “Protect Your Kids” rally outside Loudoun County’s weekly school board meeting on Tuesday. Over the past year, the county’s school board has become ground zero in the conservative culture-war fight against critical race theory and trans-inclusive policies.
In a press release last week, the Loudoun County School Board announced new guidelines for those seeking to publicly comment at the weekly meetings, including that commenters must be local residents if they weren’t LCPS students, parents, teachers, or local business owners.
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Claiming this was an effort to block him from speaking at the meeting, Walsh announced over the weekend that he had leased a home in the area. (According to Fox News, Walsh merely rented a room from a friend for one dollar.)
“Loudoun County changed the rules so that only residents can speak at the school board,” he tweeted on Friday. “In unrelated news, I’m proud to announce that I am now a resident of Loudoun County. Just rented a home in the area. I’ll have the lease agreement. See you at the meeting!”
With the school board confirming that the far-right podcaster was scheduled to speak on Tuesday evening, Walsh—in typically obnoxious fashion—mocked both the board’s rules and transgender people on Twitter.
“For too long, I have been a Virginian trapped in a Tennessean’s body,” he wrote. “It feels so good to finally live my truth openly. I’m here, I’m Virginian, and I’m proud.”
Given a minute to speak at the board meeting, Walsh—whose children are homeschooled—used his time to viciously rant against the school’s policies protecting transgender students. He labeled the board members “child abusers” and “predators.”
“You prey upon impressionable children and indoctrinate them into your insane ideological cult, a cult which holds many fanatical views, but none so deranged as the idea that boys are girls and girls are boys,” he seethed.
“By imposing this vile nonsense on students to the point even of forcing young girls to share locker rooms with boys, you deprive these kids of safety and privacy and something more fundamental, too, which is truth,” the conservative commentator added. “If education is not grounded in truth, then it is worthless. Worse, it is poison. You are poison!”
Shortly after delivering his tirade, Walsh hurried over to Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show to brag of how he “outsmarted” the school by faking his residence.
“They said they made that change to disallow non-residents. It had nothing to do with me. I became a Loudoun County resident coincidentally,” he sarcastically said. “It’s a lifelong dream I have had. I decided to finally come out and live my truth as a Virginian and it worked out this way.”
He also complained about the one-minute time limit imposed on public speakers at the meeting, insisting that it prevents concerned parents from being heard.
“The school board said they just want to hear from parents,” Walsh fumed. “Well, really? Before I showed up they were giving parents 60 seconds. If you want to hear from people, it’s a strange strategy to let them speak for 60 seconds and sound a buzzer and cut the mic off. That’s what they do. That’s how they communicate how much they want to hear from the parents.”
He went on to claim that the school’s trans-inclusive policies are “indefensible” and they are “indoctrinating kids into their religious cult.”
