Career
Early activities
Shirley started his YouTube career as an amateur vlogger and prankster at age 16. Most of his pranks involved his high-school friends, while others included publicity stunts such as disrupting celebrity weddings. [9] [8] [4] He also offered to sell some of his own recorded footage, including of the January 6 attack, to media companies such as CNN and HuffPost . [9]
Shirley said in late 2021 that he would cease his activities on YouTube in order to participate in a religious mission in Chile for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He returned to the platform two years later and began producing political content exclusively. [4] [10]
Political videos
Shirley is commonly described as right-wing. [11] [12] His YouTube channel has over 1.1 million subscribers and more than 200 million total views. [13] Shirley is best known for street interviews and direct questions. [14] Shirley has described himself as an independent journalist; [3] [14] however, due to his lack of a traditional reporting background, he has received pushback from some members of the media. [15] Statements by Republican lawmakers saying they had "worked with" Shirley on his Minnesota video raised questions about whether he acted independently. [16] According to NPR, Republican legislators had provided information that appeared in the video, with one Republican floor leader stating they were "ready and willing to provide information ... including some of the information that ended up in that video." [17]
Shirley made multiple videos in support of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in the months preceding the 2024 U.S. presidential election. [18] He paid a number of Hispanic men $20 each to hold pro-Joe Biden and pro-immigration signs in front of the White House as part of a publicity stunt in favor of Trump. When asked by Reuters whether he had exploited participants in the video, he said he "wanted to give the migrants an opportunity to voice their opinions". [19] Also in 2024, Shirley released footage from inside the maximum-security prison CECOT in El Salvador, which he praised. [15] [20] In October 2025, he participated in a White House roundtable discussion with Trump and other right-wing figures, such as Andy Ngo and Jack Posobiec, on topics including antifa. [21] [22] [20]
In September 2025, Shirley recorded an interview with British political activist Tommy Robinson, [21] in which he repeated a false claim that "40,000 British Muslims" on terror watchlists were living in the United Kingdom. Although MI5 maintains a list of 40,000 terror suspects, it does not capture information about their religious affiliation. [20] Shirley has falsely implied that Ukraine had used United States-backed funds to buy luxury cars and a Ferris wheel. [23] He has also amplified Trump's false claim that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. [24]
Shirley claimed in the title of one of his videos that Portland had "fallen" and antifa had "taken control". [21] Several people selling watches on Canal Street in Lower Manhattan were arrested by ICE after he made a video in which he called them "illegal scammers". [20] [25] The Intercept called Shirley's video titles "sensationalized" and wrote that he has platformed "individuals who spread xenophobic and Islamophobic beliefs." [20] CNN has called some of his videos anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim. [26] In an interview with Fox News, Shirley defended his videos, saying, "fraud is fraud—it doesn't matter if it's a Black person, white person, Asian person, Mexican ... and we work too hard simply just to be paying taxes and enabling fraud to be happening." [20] In 2025, James O'Keefe, the founder of the far-right activist group Project Veritas, called Shirley the "citizen journalist of the year". [20] In response to media coverage of his Minnesota fraud video, Shirley wrote on X (formerly Twitter), "I am not an enemy of the people, they are", referring to the mainstream media. [26]
Allegations of daycare and healthcare fraud in Minnesota
On December 26, 2025, Shirley published a video, filmed on December 16, [27] in which he alleged widespread fraud at Somali-run child care centers and healthcare companies in Minnesota. [6] [20] Shirley's video showed him visiting facilities that appeared empty or inactive, interviewing bystanders who said they had not seen children at the locations, and citing public payment records. [28] [29] The video received over 135 million views on X and 3 million on YouTube. [4] [30]
As of December 2025, subsequent investigations by state officials have not found evidence of fraud at the sites Shirley visited. [31] On January 30, 2026, state officials said they had "no public information to share" regarding the investigations. [32] On February 19, 2026, day cares featured in the video filed a lawsuit against the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth and Families, alleging that the agency withheld funds and conducted investigations without evidence. [33]
After its release, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation increased their presence in the state and federal funding for the childcare centers was frozen. [34] Somali-owned businesses reported a surge in harassment and threats after the video came out. Immigration and Customs Enforcement increased enforcement activity in Minnesota under an initiative known as Operation Metro Surge . [35]
In February 2026, Shirley endorsed an antisemitic documentary on "New Jersey's Jewish Invasion" published by right-wing youtuber Tyler Oliveira. After his endorsement was criticized by some Republicans, he called out what he described as the "double standards and hypocrisy of half of the 'republican influencer' space" due to their reluctance to support allegations of fraud carried out by Jews, but not other ethnic groups. [36] [37]
His endorsement was published a day after he attended Trump's 2026 State of the Union Address, to which he had been invited by Minnesota representative Pete Stauber. [38] [37] Far-right activist Laura Loomer, who had previously described herself as an opponent of "left-wing globalist Marxist Jews", criticized the Republican Party's "silence" after Shirley's support for Oliveira's video, despite many "GOP lawmakers [having been] photographed with" him. She wrote that the "GOP has a massive Nazi problem". [36]
Shirley was joined in his accusation of hypocrisy among Republicans by White Nationalist Nick Fuentes, who criticized the party for having supported Shirley's video on alleged fraud by Somali Americans, but "when another guy does the exact same thing to the Jews, 'This is another holocaust.'" [37] [36] MS NOW journalist Ja'han Jones wrote that "[d]espite coming from some abhorrent sources, the accusations of hypocrisy are accurate" because "Republicans [have] invited bigotry into their ranks when they touted Shirley’s anti-Somali crusade. And it was foolish for anyone to think this bigotry wouldn't eventually be turned on other groups." [36]
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