https://www.salon.com/2026/01/05/minnesota-day-care-hoax-is-fueled-by-maga-psychosexual-weirdness/
Minnesota day care hoax is fueled by MAGA psychosexual weirdness
The racism underlying MAGA's latest obsession is intertwined with misogyny
Nick Shirley really wants the world to know that he’s never had sex. The YouTuber who moved from “prank” videos to the more lucrative world of creating MAGA disinformation apparently believes that sexual inexperience is an armor against accusations that he’s a liar. “I’m a virgin. I don’t have sex with random girls. You’re not gonna catch me on those sexual allegation charges,” he rambled on “PBD Podcast,” insisting that he is “religious” and doesn’t “have any vices.”
It was an odd rant, and not just because he conflated consensual hook-ups with rape.
Shirley stands accused of lying for racist reasons, so his “but I’m a virgin” defense is irrational — at least on the surface.
But it makes more sense, in a psychosexual way, in light of the right’s long-standing fear and loathing of day cares.
The scandal Shirley is exploiting isn’t really about day cares.
If Shirley was only interested in building his hoax on that existing and very real case, he could have targeted anti-hunger charities for his fake sting. Instead, he went after day cares, which are only sites that were supposed to get assistance from the fraudsters but never received it.
These businesses were picked almost certainly because Shirley and his colleagues have tapped into the long-standing tendency of paranoid reactionaries to make day cares the subject of conspiracy theories. Along with birth control and abortion — whose providers are also smeared constantly with right-wing lies — day care is loathed on the right for allowing women to work instead of being financially dependent on a husband.
White women are implicitly accused of using immigrant labor as a cheat to avoid their god-given duty to quit work to stay home and raise babies.
Vice President JD Vance has been especially loud with his belief that day care is pushing women away from their supposedly inherent desire to be housewives.