Conservative mouthpiece Matt Walsh, who got his start in shock jock talk radio like Alex Jones, decided to feed his listeners' desire for someone to blame about the Republicans' government shutdown by spouting misinformation about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
MAGA Republican President Donald Trump's Department of Agriculture decided not to continue SNAP benefits to feed mostly children, the elderly, and disabled as a means to force Democrats to meet the Republican majority's conditions to reopen the government.
As with the last government shutdown, which also occurred during a Trump presidency, Republicans are using the suffering of their constituents to force Democrats to acquiesce to their unpopular budget demands.
In 2018, Republicans wanted tax breaks for the wealthy. In 2025, they want to cut Americans' access to healthcare. The White House, GOP, and conservative pundits keep trying to distract their base, who are suffering under the Republican created and controlled shutdown.
Seeing an opportunity to appeal to his audience's need to be the victim, Walsh spouted off about SNAP in an episode of his podcast for Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire.
You can watch his comments here:
Walsh asked:
"Has anyone ever starved to death in the modern history of this country because they haven't had access to food? I mean, has that actually happened in this country?"
"Has a single sane adult, OK—now, we're not talking about kids who are victims of horrific abuse and those kinds of awful cases, in which case, like, food stamps are not solving that. Has any sane adult, through no fault of his own, shriveled and died because he couldn't afford to buy anything to eat?"
"Has there been a single example of someone in modern America, in modern America, someone who has no family, no friends, no other forms of state or federal welfare he can tap into, no food banks, no churches he can visit, no job, no soup kitchens nearby, no charity food drives in his area, nothing at all?"
Feeling he'd flexed hard by demanding deaths to prove a bona fide need, Walsh stated:
"So the point is that there's a—there are a bunch of lines of defense. Like, when we deal with the question of, well, who should be feeding you? Right? There's—there are a lot of answers that come up."
"And the first person, ideally, who feeds you should be you. You should be feeding yourself if you're an adult. Who should feed your children? It should be you. Like, that's the first. That's where we should go. That should be number one, you."
Walsh is either incredibly ignorant or just pushing misinformation. The majority of able-bodied, working age SNAP recipients work for employers that don't provide a living wage.
The data shows that SNAP supplements low wages, rather than being a replacement for work, in 86% of households. Many SNAP recipients work low-wage jobs with unpredictable hours, meaning their level of employment can change frequently from month to month, but when assessed over a year, the overwhelming majority work.
Trying again to paint himself as a nice guy who just demands corpses to support government being a social safety net, Walsh said:
"And if you really can't, I mean, there are things that happen where someone really, really can't. So through no fault of their own, they can—they're not able to feed themselves. That can happen. I'm not denying that."
"But then there are so many other—in modern America, there are so many other lines of defense—even if you take EBT out of it, there are so many other lines of defense that should mean that you're not going starve."
"You should have your family. You should have friends. Even if you don't have them, you have a local community, you have soup kitchens, you have charities, you have churches, you have all of these things. You have food drives, all of these things. You have other forms of welfare programs that also exist."
In Walsh's view, economically disadvantaged communities should be responsible for feeding each other. When natural disasters strike or corporations decide to shutdown operations in the United States and wipe out a community's workplaces, that community should be responsible for funding their own food needs.
For Walsh, if the entire community is malnourished, it's OK since no one died. It's only a problem when there are deaths—illness and disease due to malnutrition are fine with Walsh and his ilk.
Continuing his spiel of misinformation and false concern, Walsh asked:
"So for how many people—I guess this is the question, how many people are in a situation where all of those lines of defense have failed, every single one? And the only possible thing left that can feed them is EBT? You know?"
"Now, if something like that—if there were someone in that situation, if something like that were ever happening in United States, then I'd be the first in line to say, yes. Get that person a taxpayer funded hot dog. I don't want to see anyone starve. Nobody does."
"But I don't think that's that's actually happening in modern America, and nobody has demonstrated otherwise."
"Like, no one has presented us with a person and said, 'OK, here's someone who—there's an actual human who's alive today in America, and for this person, legitimately, if they don't have food stamps, they will starve. It's the only thing. It's the only way they could get their hands on food'. I—no one has shown that example."
Then Walsh moved on to his usual tactic of unsupported "evidence" about SNAP to prove his point.
In a 2022 appearance on the podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, Walsh once said that "maybe millions of kids" were on puberty blockers. When pressed to present anything to support his claim, Walsh amended his statement to "hundreds of thousand," then added that he "could be wrong."
Rogan's producer corrected Walsh, informing him that only 4,780 children had been put on puberty blockers within the past five years. Walsh then made a comment about his made up numbers being more trustworthy than confirmed, documented medical data.
In other words, Walsh had made up a "fact" for shock value without doing any research, just to push his false narrative.
On the matter of SNAP benefits, Walsh claimed without any evidence:
"And in fact, if you look at what food stamp recipients are saying in their own words, you come away with the distinct impression that, like, almost none of these people actually need the food stamps."
It's important to note that Walsh is on his own Daily Wire program, The Matt Walsh Show. He could show videos of these people he's referring to—if they existed.
Walsh continued with his unsupported claims, saying:
"Instead, you come away with the impression that many of these people are simply entitled, lazy, barely literate, and, like, some of them are just frankly bad people."
Again, Walsh could show the bad people he's talking about if they existed outside his own imagination. But the largest group of SNAP recipients are White people from red states, a mirror Walsh definitely doesn't want to hold up to his audience or to show Republican voters.
Walsh also uses the tactic of pulling back on his false claims to allow himself the ability to deny his lies when confronted.
Walsh added:
"And, of course, that doesn't describe every adult on food stamps. No one is saying that."
"But it does seem to describe a large portion of them. And that is a moral outrage that we as tax paying Americans who are funding this, we have every right to be upset about that."
Walsh uses word like "seem" and "impression" and never gives exact numbers or percentages, because he knows he's lying to feed his audience's preconceived ideas and promote his false narrative.
Walsh, with zero evidence, then boldly said:
"When people are stealing our money who don't even need it and just wasting it in this profligate way, don't let anyone morally blackmail you into thinking that you're not allowed to be upset about that. Of course you could be upset about that."
Walsh provides nothing to support his charge of theft or even one person to illustrate his claims, yet urges his supporters to get upset. Incitement of his listeners' ire over nonexistent issues has been Walsh's cash cow since his talk radio career began, and this latest screed is a textbook case of his brand of manipulation.
Walsh concluded by painting his followers as victims, saying:
"And, of course, you could demand answers. You're taking my money. I want to know who exactly needs it, and for what, and how are you spending it? That is a legitimate question. Of course, it is."
"And what you end up with is there are a lot of people who, rather than get a job, would prefer to rob grocery stores and the people shopping inside them."
People outside his conservative bubble weren't buying his lies, and some came with the facts Walsh never wanted seen.
@islamoradalover/Bluesky
@hillbillybluedog/Bluesky
Indeed, Walsh's fortune is derived from the division he sows with his lies and half truths.
Other Walsh hot takes popular with his audience?
On November 3, Walsh said:
"Every time a Black woman is in any kind of professional position, we have to—like, how did she get that job? And no, we don't do that with White men."
Back in April, Walsh—again without evidence since he likely knew he was statistically wrong—claimed:
"Young black males are violent to a wildly, outrageously disproportionate degree. That’s just a fact. We all know it. And it’s time that we speak honestly about it, or nothing will ever change."
One question people won't see Walsh asking is the number of corporations that wouldn't report record profits or pay their executives tens of millions of dollars without the government subsidies their corporation receives.
Corporate welfare in 2024 cost taxpayers directly a conservative estimate of $154 billion. This figure doesn't account for multi-year subsidies, bail-outs, or tax breaks.
The 2024 total for SNAP was $93.8 billion paid to recipients.
In 2024, 12.3% of households received SNAP benefits. Of those, 59% were children, the elderly, or disabled.
Walsh and his ilk think taxpayers should be upset about the 14% of the 41% of the 12.3% who receive SNAP benefits and don't work.
Except most of that miniscule number of able-bodied adults of working age are exempt from any work requirements because they're caring for a child—a child that "pro-life" advocate Matt Walsh should be overjoyed to support.
