On a drizzly September evening, people are trickling into the historic Arlington Drafthouse just miles from Washington, D.C. Lady Gaga is blaring through the speakers, and as the theater fills up, people begin talking about things you don’t normally hear in a northern Virginia theater. At one point, two groups are simultaneously discussing the excesses of the transgender movement. Puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones should not be available for children, one group agrees.
Suddenly, the electric guitar intro to Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the U.S.A.” plays, and the crowd erupts. Out onto the stage steps 31-year-old Blaire White, clad in a skin-tight black top and pants. White begins with a promise to the assembled fans to “talk a little s***.”
This is the third stop of White’s podcast tour, which wraps up mid-October in Nashville. White starts by discussing the latest news (the second assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump) and reacting to left-wing TikToks but spends the majority of the evening chatting with fans. When the floor opens up for questions, the line is immediately a dozen people long, and it only grows.
The fans have come for what White is known for: commentary on politics, including support for Trump, and transgender issues, a subject White is uniquely poised to discuss.
White is a biological man who lives as a woman — and a Republican. Hours before the show, White is sitting in a booth at a northern Virginia diner explaining, “There’s never really been anyone like me.”
White claims to have one of the largest MAGA accounts on X and YouTube, and this certainly appears to be true, with 640,000 followers on X and 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube. White has even appeared in two music videos, first with rapper Tom MacDonald, who collaborated with Ben Shapiro earlier this year, and recently with rock band Falling in Reverse.
White’s social media posts include expressions such as “My candidate dodges bullets. Your candidate dodges interviews. We are not the same,” and video titles include “I Got Kicked Out Of Pride For Asking Questions” and “‘I Regret Transitioning’ — Talk w/ Teen De-transitioner.”
It all started, as things usually do these days, on campus. As a student at California State University, Chico, White, prompted by a psychology professor, took a BuzzFeed quiz that supposedly gauges racism. The result of this highly subjective exercise affected the grade given by the instructor. Fed up, White made a video about liberal craziness and posted it.
“I expected seven people to watch, four of which might be my cousins and close family,” White says. “I woke up and I had 10,000 views, and it just spiraled and spiraled.”
White’s oldest video on YouTube is from December 2015, and after starting to make money within a year, White dropped out of college to pursue commentary full time. White was in the early stages of gender transition treatment and developed a mission to speak on transgender issues “in a way that’s not effing crazy.”
Trans formational
One-on-one, White isn’t as much of a firebrand as online but isn’t afraid to speak plainly.
Having always struggled with gender dysphoria, White still accepts its classification as a mental disorder. As a child, White didn’t have any sense of being transgender, which is an “adult” concept, but “I had something that made me feel different.”
White doesn’t believe in “transgender children” but thinks children can suffer from gender dysphoria. That said, giving them hormone therapy or surgery as minors is off the table. At age 18, adults should be able to make their own decisions, White says, but these decisions shouldn’t be based on today’s mainstream concept of gender.
“Trans people have existed long before modern queer theory, modern gender ideology, and all the pronouns, too,” White says. “So I think what you’re seeing with the modern trans movement is because it’s become so broad in this description of what trans is, you have people falling into it that shouldn’t be, people making mistakes.”
People who identify as nonbinary, embodying neither gender, are often lumped under the transgender umbrella, for example. White categorically rejects this identity.
White believes there are two genders: male and female. “And then you have people who are transsexuals, who feel like the other and sometimes take certain steps to embody that physically. But I actually don’t think you can ever become the opposite sex, like I don’t believe I’m a woman. I think I’m a trans woman, which I think is a name for something very specific in society.”
White may be the only transgender commentator who has both helped people decide to transition and encouraged others to de-transition or warned them away from transitioning at all.
“I definitely am aware that I’m doing something no one else has before, which can be stressful,” White says. “And it’s a lot of weight on my shoulders.”
MAGA energy
Much of White’s content is focused on critiquing the transgender movement, but the commentator is also broadly “anti-woke.” White criticizes Black Lives Matter, lax immigration laws, and Vice President Kamala Harris. It was Trump’s election in 2016 that drew White into politics.
“I was able to see that the media had a chokehold on people, which I think he made visible in a way that no other politician had before, probably because he wasn’t a politician,” White says. “It was also the first election that I think social media was sort of at its peak.”
Thanks to the internet, voters could fact-check cable news networks in real time. “Just seeing the disparity, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m all in for this guy they’re lying about,’” White says.
White names Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones as favorite political commentators, with Jones being a particular influence. As a young teenager, “I understood a lot of what he said was insane at the time, but I understood that there was a nugget of truth as well.”
“I just like imperfect people. I like people who really attack the issues in a way that’s authentic. I’ll take someone who’s authentic and occasionally wrong over someone who’s fake and also wrong at the same time,” White says.
White’s own authenticity and unfiltered commentary have earned criticism but also attracted fans and friends.
Arielle Scarcella, a self-proclaimed “lesbian who speaks on LGBT culture, politics, women’s issues, and ‘controversial’ conversations,” has known White professionally and as a friend for about eight years.
“Blaire has taken her trauma … and turned it into a visual healing journey for all of her viewers,” Scarcella told the Washington Examiner over email. “People watch her because she’s funny. People follow her because she’s witty. People love her because she’s [authentic].”
Youth appeal
In many ways, White represents the typical Trump voter disgusted by the excesses of the Left and the hyperpolarization of U.S. institutions. At the podcast taping, the crowd applauds when White calls former first lady Melania Trump an “angel” and cheers for the former president.
But thanks to White’s identity and measured perspective on LGBT issues, the commentator also represents disaffected liberals who feel their party has gone crazy. It helps, in this case, that White is not the stereotypical Republican.
Demi, a 27-year-old at White’s show who declined to give her last name, said watching White’s videos made her more right-leaning despite her teachers, friends, and social media algorithm all skewing left. “She doesn’t fit the mold of a typical conservative,” she said.
Daniel Savu, 19, decided to buy a ticket to White’s show even though he’s a college student and money is tight. Savu said that as he grew interested in more “gender critical” ideas over the past couple of years, he gravitated toward White’s content. “She’s not forcing her ideals on anyone,” he said. “She’s willing to criticize both the Right and the Left.”
Left, right, or in between, White is resonating with Generation Z, from older high schoolers to 20-somethings. These Zoomers may not all be old enough to rent a car, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t ready to vote for policies that affect their day-to-day lives.
Young people are trying to buy homes. They face violence in their cities. They were devastated by the COVID-19 lockdowns, missing out on crucial experiences in school or in their early careers.
“I think that they’re going to be the generation that actually fixes all of it and reverses course on all of this stuff because they’re feeling the pain the most,” White says.
White is tapping into a feeling among young people that the narrative they’re being fed about the world simply isn’t true.
“You can’t build your house on a false foundation. It will crash, period,” fellow transgender YouTuber Buck Angel says. “That’s what she’s been showing for a long time.”
“She will make a lot of change not only for trans people,” Angel adds, “but she will make a lot of change for the world.”
The audience at White’s Virginia event skews toward the under-40 crowd. Many of the audience members are gay or transgender, as they reveal in the Q&A. It’s clear these fans have a deep connection with White as they tell their own stories of struggles ranging from identity to political differences. One fan reads White an admiring poem.
They are also steeped in online culture: When White and fans throw out names such as Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender influencer who made it to the White House; James Charles, a famous YouTuber; and Jeffrey Marsh, a nonbinary TikToker, everyone knows exactly whom the room is discussing.
Twenty-five-year-old Binga Tupamaki, president of the youth wing of Finland’s National Coalition Party, happened to be in the U.S. during White’s show. She wondered at the camaraderie among White’s fans, saying, “It feels like family.”
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Whether White is talking about Trump, guns, or woke TikToks, fans listen and are finding a community in which they’re not subjected to the constant ideological purity tests of today’s Left.
Savu, the 19-year-old college student, said getting a ticket to White’s show was worth it for the camaraderie. “I want to meet other people within the conservative LGBTQ space,” he said. Plus, “it’s just good to have fun sometimes.”
Madeline Fry Schultz is contributors editor of the Washington Examiner.