Conservative commentator Matt Walsh clashed with a liberal student at the University of Idaho on Tuesday night after the student accused him of misrepresenting statistics on transgender mass shooters.
The student, believing they had cornered Walsh, held up a printed graph they said he had shared on social media to argue there was an “epidemic” of transgender school shooters in the United States. The student contended that because the study cited included only one individual, Walsh was either deliberately misleading people to make his point or uninformed.
Walsh responded by quipping that an accusation of lying from someone who believes men can be women was rich.
Lib student accuses @MattWalshBlog of lying about the rise of trans violence in America and gets cooked:
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) April 29, 2026
LIB: "Why do you have to lie to make your point?"
MW: "I think as someone who believes that women have penises you're not one to lecture people for lying." 🔥 pic.twitter.com/sGhEt69KRd
"So you cited a per-million statistic based on one person as evidence that there's some sort of epidemic of transgender violence going around this country," the student said.
"But there have obviously been multiple transgender shooters just in the last couple of years," Michael Knowles pointed out.
"I'm not denying any sort of specific individual instance. I'm talking about this is a statistic in which you compared these numbers for all of these other populations are significantly lower than they would be with actual statistics," the student said. "I was just curious. Like I want to understand like your process here. Why one, why you wouldn't cite that source? Like, is it just because, you know, it's embarrassing that you only cited it off or based it off of one person or like more to the point? Like, why do you have to lie to make your point? You know, why do you have to if there's this epidemic going around? Why do you have to make sh*t up in order to make the argument?"
"Well, first of all, I think as someone who believes that women have penises, you're not one to lecture people for lying," Walsh replied as the room erupted in applause.
This comes after several high-profile shootings in recent years involving transgender individuals, including the 2023 attack at the Covenant School in Nashville, a 2025 shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, and a more recent mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia.
Walsh has frequently focused on issues surrounding transgenderism, most notably in his film "What Is a Woman?"