Person of interest: Michael Knowles

Last week at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Committee summit — an annual meeting of the minds — saw the usual rogues gallery of reactionary freaks: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Mike Pompeo, J.D. Vance, Majory Taylor Greene and former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro were all keynote speakers. 

But one, slightly less relevant guest grabbed the most headlines. Michael Knowles, a conservative pundit and podcast host for Ben Shapiro’s right-wing rag The Daily Wire, came under fire for suggesting that “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology.”

Transgender people, according to Knowles, are “laboring a delusion, and we need to correct that delusion.”

When he was called out for suggesting what would amount to a pogrom, Knowles, of course, rejected the idea that he was calling for the literal elimination of trans people, but rather their supposed “ideology.”  

This is certainly not the one-time failed actor and full-time grifter’s first rodeo with using bigotry to expand his profile. In 2019, Knowles was invited by the University of Missouri-Kansas City chapter of the Young Americans Foundation to deliver a speech entitled “Men are Not Women.”

Other speaking engagements over the past half-decade have included titles like “Teach the ABCs, not LGB(T)s” and “Banning Transgenderism”. 

Knowles is just the latest of many right-wing pundits to weaponize the growing (and bad faith) anxiety around trans people that they initially stirred up to boost their national profiles. Their rhetoric has provided ample ammo for GOP-led legislatures and helped create a new climate of fear amongst trans people. 

We are now seeing bills across countless states that would deny healthcare to trans kids, and more than 50% of trans and non-binary youth have considered taking their own lives in 2022. 

But this is only the beginning of what Knowles and his ilk are calling for: GOP stalwart Ron DeSantis is now attempting to create laws that would charge parents with felonies if they provide gender-affirming care to their children. 

And the Texas legislature is currently attempting to ban all gender-affirming care, even for adults. 

Even if Knowles’ intentionally polemic statements are cynical — and they are — the consequences are becoming very, very real for millions of people.