This past Friday on The Breakfast Club, guest/stand-up comic Lil Duval made some, shall we say, very poorly thought out comments when he joked about killing trans woman. If you need a refresher, here it is. The segment in question began when Duval said "Shout out to all the trannies out there," after he was asked about President Trump's out of left field Twitter ban of transgender personnel in the military. From there he was asked what he'd do if he learned that a woman he was dating was transgender. Those are the comments that really ignited the firestorm.
"This might sound messed up, but I don’t care, she dying," he said. "You manipulated me to believe in this thing. If one did that to me, and they didn’t tell me, I’mma be so mad I’d probably going to want to kill them."
The comic's appearance came just a few days after author and trans advocate Janet Mock appeared on the program to promote her book, Surpassing Certainty. It also comes in the middle of a large number of murders of transgender people, the most recent of which occurred only days after Duval's interview.
When the hosts provided pushback to Duval, stating that what he was saying would be a hate crime, they also asked about Mock. The comic responded by misgendering her: "Nope. That nigga doing his thing….ain’t finna get me."
After the initial burst of outrage, Lil Duval also acknowledged the controversy on Twitter, though he remained unapologetic about it:
As you likely guessed because of the headline, the interview has also led to some blowback for both the "world’s most dangerous morning show" and host Charlamagne Tha God. For instance, at this past weekend's Politicon (an event that straight-facedly bills itself as "the Coachella of politics"), advocates in the audience shouted "We are not a joke! Trans people are not a joke!" at Charlamagne while he was onstage speaking with MSNBC personality Ari Melber:
Additionally, advocates called for a boycott of the morning program on Twitter by using hashtags like: #BoycottBreakfastClub, #TransLivesMatter, and #TransFolksAreNotJokes. Here are some tweets on the subject that racked up big numbers:
As for Lil Duval, whose mouth caused the controversy, remember, he stood up for Charlamange (I think?) on Monday:
That same day, Charlamagne also spoke on the controversy by saying, "I’m not apologizing for the words of Lil Duval."
As for where this situation currently stands, activists told The Root that they plan to get iHeartRadio, the company that owns the show, to apologize. Additionally a separate petition was started askingdemanding that Charlamagne apologize and that iHeartRadio cancel the show. You can read about the argument behind that effort over at The Root.
