Watch Libs of TikTok’s Chaya Raichik exposed in stunning, cringe-worthy interview

The internet lit up over the weekend when a 53-minute long interview with right-wing extremist Chaya Raichik went viral. Taylor Lorenz, a technology columnist for The Washington Post who has followed internet culture for years, spent almost an hour asking Raichik a range of questions about Libs of TikTok and the hate the social media account has generated, only for Raichik to not really seem to be able to answer most of them — and at one time Raichik awkwardly shows Lorenz a video of oral sex.

In an era where social media platforms have become the battlegrounds for ideological wars, few figures have stirred as much controversy as Raichik, the 29-year-old woman behind the Libs of TikTok account. Known for her incendiary posts targeting the LGBTQ+ community, Raichik has amassed a following of millions that hang on her every tweet and tirade against what she perceives as the radicalization of gender and sexuality in society.

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Often, after Raichik posts, institutions she highlights receive bomb threats or other threats of violence. The interview comes as the country comes to terms with the recent death of nonbinary Owasso High School sophomore Nex Benedict, who died on February 8 after a fight and months of relentless bullying, in Oklahoma, where Raichik was appointed to a library board position in January.

The interview, a rare glimpse into the mind of one of the most divisive figures in today’s digital discourse, unfolded with all the unpredictability and tension of a high-stakes drama. Sitting outdoors at a coffee shop in Los Angeles last week, Lorenz, known for her nuanced reporting on the intersections of technology, culture, and politics, asked the far-right social media creator about her platform, her beliefs, and LGBTQ+ topics. Raichik appeared wearing dark sunglasses and a shirt with Lorenz’s face emblazoned on it. Raichik has targeted Lorenz as her media archenemy after Lorenz revealed Rachik’s identity behind the Libs of TikTok account in April 2022.

Raichik admitted that she was “radicalized” after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, taking issue with public health mandates and business closures. She began watching videos online and became outraged at what she found.

How did that get her interested in attacking LGBTQ+ people, particularly transgender individuals, Lorenz asked.

“It got me interested in politics, and then once I was interested in politics, I stumbled upon this whole movement, and I was absolutely appalled by what I was seeing,” Raichik responded.

“Appalled by what?” asked Lorenz.

“The radicalization of it,” Raichik stammered in response. “The way that they come after our most innocent and vulnerable population: our kids. The way that it makes. There’s nothing logical about it. There’s nothing logical about chopping off kids’ body parts. There’s nothing logical about giving kids porn in school. There’s two sexes and that’s it. So anything out of that, it’s just based on lies and nonsense.”

Gender-affirming care for minors includes counseling and social support before puberty at which time parents and patients, in consultation with their doctors, may be prescribed puberty blockers and later hormones, with rare instances of 16- and 17-year-olds having access to breast-related surgeries, though the vast majority of breast augmentation procedures in teens are conducted on cisgender girls, a point Raichik dismissed after Lorenz inquired about her point of view on procedures that affirm the gender of cisgender people.

One of the most revealing moments came when Raichik admitted to having no personal acquaintances within the LGBTQ+ community.

“I know you grew up in a sort of a more conservative community. Did you know any LGBTQ people growing up? What was your exposure to that community?” Lorenz asked.

“I never really paid attention to it,” Raichik replied, dismissing LGBTQ+ people as a group she only recently learned about through videos online.

This admission was startling, not for its rarity in conservative circles, but for the stark contrast it drew between Raichik’s profound influence on the public discourse surrounding LGBTQ+ issues and her lack of direct engagement with individuals from the community. It raised an essential question: How can one so fervently advocate for or against the rights and experiences of a group they’ve never personally interacted with?

The interview took a turn toward the surreal when Raichik, who has leveraged her platform to castigate public figures and private individuals alike for their support of LGBTQ+ rights, ensnared herself in a web of hypocrisy regarding the definition of a public figure. In a striking moment, Lorenz reminded Raichik of the controversy Raichik stoked surrounding her exposure as the person behind Libs of TikTok two years ago, an incident that had sparked outrage among Raichik’s followers, who decried Lorenz’s reporting an act of doxxing and an invasion of privacy.

“A lot of LGBTQ people say that your posts cause an enormous amount of pain. How does that make you feel?” Lorenz asked.

“How does it make you feel that your reporting on me causes me pain?” Raichik replied.

“I feel sad for that, honestly,” Lorenz said, prompting Raichik to inquire, “So would you stop?”

“No, I’m a journalist, and you’re a public figure, but I’m just talking about these nonpublic figures,” Lorenz said before Raichik cut her off.

“If you put yourself out there on a public platform, then you’re kind of making yourself public,” Raichik quipped.

“So anybody that posts on social media is a public figure in your mind,” Lorenz probed.

“If you’re putting your videos out there with the intention that it should go viral, you want publicity…I think that these people, well, first of all, a lot of the people I post about are actually in positions that are public,” Raichik began saying before Lorenz asked her to consider people who don’t have public roles.

“I’m talking about the people that haven’t, right? The individual private citizens that you’ve posted who are not, I would argue they’re not public figures. You’re saying they are public figures because they’re posting on social media?” Lorenz pressed.

“They want to be public,” Raichik replied. “They’re public, going on a public platform and publicly posting a video on a social media site that is meant for your videos to go viral.”

After Racihik admitted that Twitter (now called X) is a social media platform meant for things to go viral, Lorenz continued to drill down.

“So when you were building your audience and had hundreds of thousands of followers, then would you also agree that you were a public figure?” she asked.

“I think that if anyone who puts something out there publicly, anyone could share their stuff,” Raichik said, but said, “I’m not a lawyer, I don’t know the legal [definition],” when Lorenz pressed her on whether she considers LGBTQ+ people who are merely posting on social media public figures.

“I’m only asking this because I know that you’ve noted that when I reported on you that you felt like it was unfair and that you didn’t meet the bar for a public figure. So I’m just kind of wondering, as somebody with such a large social media audience, you’re saying people, with much smaller social media audiences meet the bar for a public figure?”

Raichik then appeared to get more uncomfortable.

“If anyone puts out content publicly, then that content could go anywhere. That’s what I believe. It could go viral. Anyone could share it. It could go to the wrong side—what they call the wrong side of TikTok. It could go. People will see it. You can’t control that. That’s why they hate me. They want to create this content, and they only want their bubble to see it. And then I’m showing it to other people, and they just can’t handle it.”

Lorenz pushed back, saying, “I think you’re editorializing it as well,” which prompted this response from Raichik: “I provide very little commentary, probably the least from any other Twitter account that’s even a quarter of my size.”

Perhaps the most damning indictment of Raichik’s understanding of the issues she campaigns against came when discussing gender-affirming care for transgender people. Despite her vociferous condemnation of such medical interventions, Raichik struggled to articulate a coherent argument against them, vacillating between denial of scientific consensus on gender dysphoria and unfounded claims about the prevalence of regret among those who undergo transition-related procedures.

“If ‘transgenderism’ doesn’t exist, which it seems like that’s what you believe, what happens to all the people living happy lives as trans people?” Lorenz asked.

“Well, first of all, the whole trans, it’s based on a lie. You can’t change your gender,” Raichik said. “They could go live their life. I mean, I can’t tell someone what to do in their house.”

Lorenz responded, “Sounds like you do want to tell people what to do in their house,” to which Raichik replied (as she did several times in the interview), “I never said that.”

Lorenz: “So you’re totally OK with people being trans, just not as long as they’re in public?”

Raichik again deflected.

“No, I never said that," she said. "They could—the whole thing is based off of a lie. And I think this lie cannot be mainstream in our society. It’s just it’s a lie.”

But when asked to point out the harm transgender people are doing to others, Raichik had no answer.

“I like the truth. I like truth. Like I said, we are a nation of truth and I seek the truth. What’s the harm? The harm is that there’s a lie that is very mainstream and is being embedded into every institution.”

This segment of the interview underscored a troubling reality: Raichik’s positions, broadcast to millions, are not rooted in a deep understanding of or engagement with the subject matter but seem to be driven by a broader agenda to stigmatize and delegitimize the transgender community.

Moreover, Raichik’s attempt to conflate her campaign against LGBTQ+ rights with a crusade for truth and scientific accuracy crumbled under Lorenz’s questioning. When confronted with the reality that gender identity is a complex interplay of biological, psychological, and social factors — a nuanced view supported by a wealth of scientific research — Raichik could offer no substantive counterargument, instead retreating into vague platitudes.

Reaction to the interview’s public release has been bountiful, eliciting a wave of criticism and mockery toward Raichik. The far-right influencer's name began trending on social media after people circulated the interview.

“The thing that makes the Chaya Raichik interview so horrifically compelling is that she has ruined people's lives for reasons she literally cannot articulate,” wrote Ari Drennen of Media Matters. “We're conditioned to expect a villain monologue but she's playing Twitter like a slot machine.”

“I’m not sure I’ve ever seen someone exposed as a fraud as decisively as Chaya Raichik was. Well done,Taylor Lorenz,” wrote journalist Brian Tyler Cohen.

“Chaya Raichik is the definition of tweeting a big game. couldn’t string a sentence together if her life depended on it. god bless,” wrote content creator and Libs of TikTok target Matt Bernstein.

The Human Rights Campaign’s Brandon Wolf also commented about the interview.

“Unsurprising that Chaya Raichik can’t string 3 words together to rationalize her transphobia,” Wolf wrote. “She peddles hate for profit and does not care who foots the bill.”

Watch the captivating interview with the Washington Post's Taylor Lorenz and Libs of TikTok's Chaya Raichik below.

LibsofTikTok Chaya Raichik - Taylor Lorenz - FULL INTERVIEWwww.youtube.com