David French, formerly of National Review and now at The Dispatch, has gone off the deep end in the Trump era. Not only has he turned into an avid social-justice warrior, but now he’s done a flip-flop on transgender pronouns.
The controversy arose when French welcomed a new writer to the Dispatch—a middle-aged biological male who now identifies as Jessica Riedl and calls himself a woman.
This is great news for The Dispatch. Nobody is better on fiscal policy than Jessica. Jessica and I recently had a great conversation about the grim realities of the federal budget on The Opinions podcast (link in next tweet) https://t.co/BcwnnY0sZV
— David French (@DavidAFrench) June 28, 2025
What, exactly, are the so-called conservatives at The Dispatch conserving, anyway?
Riedl, who is also a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, was hired by The Dispatch to write about economics, but has recently taken to X to cite widely debunked studies claiming that there’s such a thing as a “trans brain.”
I HATE having to address transgender issues, but the bad-faith ignorance is astounding.🧵
My feed has been filled with conservatives attacking transgenderism as a mental illness with no legit biological basis. Which is medically, demonstrably FALSE. Yes, transgender women are…
— Jessica Riedl 🧀 🇺🇦 (@JessicaBRiedl) June 29, 2025
But getting back to French, here’s what he had to say in 2018 at National Review, when he claimed the moral high ground and adamantly declared that he would not lie about a person’s gender:
While I’m utterly opposed to boorish behavior, the use of a pronoun isn’t a matter of mere manners. It’s a declaration of a fact. I won’t call Chelsea Manning “she” for a very simple reason. He’s a man. If a person legally changes his name, I’ll use his legal name. But I will not use my words to endorse a falsehood. I simply won’t. We’re on a dangerous road if we imply that treating a person with “basic human dignity” requires acquiescing to claims we know to be false. [Emphasis added]
French concluded his piece at National Review with a call for truth and a declaration that he would not compromise on this issue:
I understand the desire for social peace. Truly I do. The culture wars are exhausting and divisive. But treating every single human being with dignity and respect means not just defending their constitutional liberties and showing them basic human kindness, it also means telling the truth — even when the truth is hard. Any compromise that requires conservatives to grant the other side’s false and harmful premise is no compromise at all.
As recently as 2022, French wrote, “Reasonable people can disagree, but the key reason why I don’t use ‘preferred pronouns’ (names will do just fine) is that words have meaning, and discarding that meaning is a form of assent to a system of belief you don’t subscribe to.”
Yet in a podcast welcoming Reidl to the Dispatch team this week, he did exactly what he had vowed never to do: He lied and referred to a biological male as a “she.”
Jessica might be one of the nation’s foremost experts about the federal budget and about America’s fiscal realities, and she has taught me an enormous amount about those issues. So I am delighted that Jessica is joining us for this conversation. [Emphasis added]
Anytime I see someone so radically distancing himself from his prior values, I have to wonder which views, if any, are sincere. It’s no secret that a lot of people in the media—on both the left and the right—are grifters. They’re in it for the money and will say whatever their benefactors want them to say. I’m always suspicious when someone “evolves” on a supposedly deeply held belief, as when Barack Obama, the Clintons, and many other Democrats—and, sadly, a shocking number of Republicans—changed their views on homosexuality and gay marriage seemingly overnight.
I won’t pretend to discern French’s motives, but I will say that he was right in 2018. No one—and this is especially true for Christians—should lie about someone’s gender. It goes back to the creation order. All the way back in Genesis 1, we learn, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” That’s the final word on the matter. End of story.
No hormones or disfiguring surgery can change that which God ordained when he created each and every one of us. It’s not for us to defy His creation order or to lie about it to appease mentally ill individuals. French knows that—or at least he seemed to when he was at National Review.
On an editorial note, we here at PJ Media have not and will not bow to the trans mob. We’re willing to use someone’s given name, because that doesn’t require us to lie, but we will not tell falsehoods about an individual’s biological gender. If that results in our demonetization and censorship, so be it. The truth is too important to be squandered for a bowl of soup, as it were. Will you stand with us against the forces shoving this dangerous ideology down the throats of our children? Become a VIP member today to join the fight. Use the promo code FIGHT for a 60% discount. Sign up here.
