If Matt Walsh’s Reporting Is ‘Dangerous,’ What Is Biden-Backed ‘MAGA Extremism’ Rhetoric That Got An 18-Year-Old Killed?

Journalist Matt Walsh uncovered videos showing that Vanderbilt University Medical Center has been mutilating sex-confused kids and bragging about the profit margins of doing so since 2018, and some left-wingers came away with the impression that Vanderbilt, not the children it manipulated and maimed, was the victim. Accusing Walsh of “terrorism,” “harassment,” and “behaving dangerously,” they’re claiming Walsh is inciting violence against the medical center and are trying to shut down his reporting as a result.

But while a journalist publishing what the corporate media refuses to gets accused of stirring up hypothetical violence, an 18-year-old kid was just killed when he was run down by a man who said he thought the “teen was part of a Republican extremist group” — just weeks after the president of the United States ominously smeared “MAGA Republicans” as a “threat to the very soul of this country.”

Leftists weren’t wailing about “incitement to violence” then, and the national press almost universally ignored the slaying of 18-year-old Cayler Ellingson. They saved their outrage for Walsh, who merely published information, screenshots, and videos he’d obtained from Vanderbilt to reveal the medical center’s mutilation of minors’ healthy organs, the calloused financial incentives of which the center boasted, and the steps the center had taken to silence internal dissent.

A sane person would be horrified at Vanderbilt chopping up children’s genitals for profit, but instead, some leftists decided Walsh was actually the dangerous and even criminal one.

Noah Berlatsky, a writer with bylines in The Washington Post and The Atlantic, flagged Walsh’s reporting for Twitter Support and accused the tech platform of being “complicit in terrorism” and potentially “murder” if it didn’t shut Walsh’s reporting down.

Leah Torres, an abortion center director who had her medical license suspended two years ago, said Walsh was “behaving dangerously” and “is going to get people hurt and/or killed.” She also claims to have reported the post, saying “that hardly feels like enough,” and tagging the FBI.

Alejandra Caraballo, an instructor at Harvard Law School, claimed without evidence that “Vanderbilt medical center has had to shift medical appointments for its trans clinic to virtual telehealth appointments as a result of threats being made.”

“Matt Walsh is inciting a terror campaign against a hospital and disrupting care,” she added. “He will get people hurt or killed.”

She also cited an equally slanted NBC News article that framed the topic this way: “Several children’s hospitals, most notably Boston Children’s, have been the targets of a far-right harassment campaign for months, led by anti-trans influencers with millions of collective followers who have spread misinformation about the hospitals’ gender-affirming treatment for minors.” NBC failed to say what part of the reporting on hospitals’ abuse of minors was “misinformation.”

Self-described “woke social justice warrior” Zack Hunt, another Twitter user to flag Walsh for the FBI, accused Walsh of being a “terrorist” and running a “terrorist campaign,” and called for a stop to his supposed “efforts to terrorize our city before he incite[s] more threats of violence.”

It’s worth noting that the legal standard set by the Supreme Court in its “Brandenburg test” allows the government to police speech advocating for criminal behavior only if the speech is both “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action” and is “likely to incite or produce such action.” Walsh’s reporting on Vanderbilt does nothing of the sort, of course. He’s not advocating for any crimes at all, so his speech isn’t “directed to inciting or producing” lawlessness of any kind — much less “imminent” and “likely” criminal acts.

Biden’s inflammatory rhetoric isn’t reasonably prosecutable under the Brandenberg test either, but it gets a lot closer than a journalist’s factual exposé.

In a prime-time speech earlier this month backlit by an ominous, blood-red backdrop, President Joe Biden fanned flames with proclamations like “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”

“MAGA forces … fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country,” Biden declared, before urging: “We are not bystanders in this ongoing attack on democracy.”

“It’s in our hands — yours and mine — to stop the assault on American democracy,” he continued. “We’re all called, by duty and conscience, to confront extremists…”

Confronting so-called “extremism” sounds a lot like the reason Shannon Brandt, 41, gave for using his car to fatally run down Ellingson in McHenry, North Dakota, when he told police he thought “the teen was part of a Republican extremist group” after “a political argument.”

If leftists think Walsh’s publication of videos showing Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s own employees admitting to abuse of kids for financial gain is “incitement,” then what the heck do they think Biden’s inflammatory — and deadly — rhetoric is?

Elle Purnell is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow her work on Twitter @_etreynolds.

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