Right-wing podcaster Matt Walsh reportedly caught trying to trick trans people into being interviewed for anti-trans documentary

Transgender activist Eli Erlick revealed Monday that right-wing podcaster Matt Walsh was behind a documentary for which Erlick and several other individuals received misleading requests to be interviewed, The Daily Beast reported.

Erlick tweeted Monday that Walsh's "crew is trying to trick trans people into joining a fake documentary. His producers set up a whole front organization" called the Gender Unity Project "and tried to recruit me into his next anti-trans documentary."

Erlick followed up with screenshots of emails from the film's associate producer "Makenna Lynn," who she later learned was really Makenna Lynn Waters, a producer on The Matt Walsh Show. The Gender Unity Project, Erlick said, turned out to be registered to right-wing documentarian Justin Folk.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Erlick said "at least nine people have personally told her that Walsh's team approached them, and that one actually filmed scenes for the deceptive documentary" and spoke with Walsh personally, the Beast reports.

According to Erlick, those contacted included transgender MMA fighters Fallon Fox and Alana McLaughlin, several surgeons who provide gender-affirming care, and Debi Jackson, whose 14-year-old transgender daughter appeared on the cover of National Geographic.

Waters reportedly told Jackson the film would "not include any bigotry" in an effort to convince her and her daughter to be interviewed.

Walsh, who works for Ben Shapiro's conservative media company The Daily Wire, has become one of the most prominent anti-trans voices on the right. Last month, he appeared on Dr. Phil to debate two trans activists.

"I could sit here and say that I feel like a tomato plant, but that doesn't mean I actually am," Walsh said on the show.

Walsh also wrote a children's book that uses a boy who thinks he's a walrus as an allegory for transgender youth.

He tweeted last month that he was preparing an "assault on gender ideology" that would make the Dr. Phil appearance "seem tame and boring by comparison."