MAGA Rep. Tim Burchett has gone on a furious social media tirade over a clip that aired on TV seven years ago.
The 61-year-old Tennessee lawmaker got fired up over a 2018 Good Morning America clip featuring a then-11-year-old drag performer “Desmond is Amazing.”
“This is child abuse,” a triggered Burchett, whom President Donald Trump praised early Monday morning on Truth Social for a TV appearance, posted on X later that day. “It is demonic. We need Jesus.” The congressman then tagged Trump and the FCC, requesting that they “look into” the 2018 video.
The delayed MAGA rage is curious. Burchett was sharing a post from the Elon Musk-endorsed MAGA account Defiant L’s, which was posted on Monday.
However, the Defiant L’s account shared a GMA clip posted in May 2024, using the video to attack ABC and host Michael Strahan. The source of both X posts was a clip of right-wing podcast host Matt Walsh, who posted an episode in 2022 with the title “Drag Kid Pretends to do Ketamine on a Couch With Drag Queen.”
The ketamine reference in the title comes from a social media clip, not GMA.
The 2018 clip ran on GMA Day, a one-hour segment that replaced The Chew.
Walsh used the clip, which has had over 1.3 million views, as part of an episode that claimed Disney engaged in “predatory grooming practices towards children.” He pointed out that Disney owns ABC before sharing the GMA clip featuring the drag kid, and added, “I didn’t dig this up from the darkest fringes of the internet, this is as mainstream as it gets.”
The clip was also used to slam Strahan by MAGA social media users last year when he was accused of disrespecting the military during the National Anthem.
“Desmond is Amazing” is now 18, uses she/they pronouns, and goes by the name Desi Napoles.
Napoles also stopped doing drag in 2020 and is an author, teen activist, and model.
“It wasn’t drag anymore, it was me being me,” they told Teen Vogue last year. “It wasn’t me playing a character, it was me being who I really am, which is a creative person who likes to make stuff and do makeup. That’s what prompted my shift. It wasn’t me losing interest, it was me discovering myself—this might not be drag, it might just be me.”
The Daily Beast has contacted Burchett and Napoles for comment.
Burchett, a former mayor of Knox County, has a history of derogatory remarks against the LGBTQ community.
Last year, he said being transgender was a “mental illness.” Burchett appeared on Fox Business News in April 2024 and spoke about then-President Joe Biden‘s celebration of the Transgender Day of Visibility on Easter Sunday.
After calling Biden’s comment a “smack in the face” and complaining about the “continuation of surgeries on transgenders [sic],” Burchett stated, “You know, this thing is, it’s, it’s a mental illness. We just gotta address it. It’s not a, it’s not a normal type lifestyle, and, I can’t be more against what the president did.”
The conservative was also quick to weigh in on a brief controversy around a Netflix animated series called Dead End: Paranormal Park which aired between 2022 and 2023.
Elon Musk, who has a transgender daughter, got involved in the campaign to have the already canceled series taken off the streaming platform due to it featuring a transgender character. Burchett again attempted to get the FCC involved.
Appearing on Benny Johnson’s podcast, Burchett admitted last month he wasn’t sure who polices Netflix content.
“I think what we have to look at, who regulates the FCC, and since it’s cable, does that count? I don’t know. I don’t know enough about it, but they need to be brought in. We need to find out what their agenda is and why they’re pushing this stuff.”
He claimed the animated series “is recruiting, it is grooming, it is the worst of the worst.”
In the Teen Vogue profile, Napoles also spoke about conservatives trying to ban drag.
“Spreading these false narratives about drag is harmful to people who want to experiment in drag. It’s extremely harmful,” they said.
“[Drag bans] aren’t trying to protect children, they’re trying to eliminate art forms that the queer community uses to express themselves. I feel like drag has led to a more accepting space for LGBTQ people. Because they want to ban that, they’re trying to reverse that acceptance.”
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