Friday morning on NBC’s free streaming platform NBC News NOW, NBC Capitol Hill correspondent and MSNBC’s Way Too Early host Ali Vitali offered a fawning but mournful puff piece on a Texas family with a 15-year-old transgender child — born a boy but posing as a woman — that’s grown so fearful of their child’s existence and safety they’re leaving the United States for an undisclosed country.
A partisan hack through and through, Vitali painted the Gonzales family as an ordinary one with two daughters and their trans child having been publicly active since they were seven when, in reality, they’re a hardened, partisan operation and perpetual stars in the local, state, and national media going back to 2017.
Fill-in co-host Brian Cheung led into Vitali by lamenting another item on the agenda for Texas Republicans in the special session is “another controversial battle” in the form of “reviv[ing] a so-called bathroom bill that would require people to use public restrooms according to their assigned sex at birth.”
Speaking to Vitali, he continued: “This is the latest in a long string of anti-LGBTQ+ laws that have been pushed by Republicans in the Lone Star State, and it’s that trend toward restrictions that’s stoking fear among families. So much so that one has made the tough decision to leave not just Texas but the United States all together.”
Vitali’s piece never mentioned the other side (e.g. parents or students uncomfortable with a biological male in the same locker rooms as girls), instead going full trans propagandist: “It means that this one family that I spoke to exclusively, Brian feared so much for their family, their security that they made the tough call not just to leave the place they’ve called home for so long their entire lives, but instead to leave the country altogether.”
She even flew down to Texas and sit at the Gonzales dining room table to play arts and crafts as they chatted before making them out to be victims, almost like they were fleeing persecution or certain death from a certain time period (click “expand”):
VITALI: 15-year-old Libby Gonzalez is a lot of things.
“LIBBY” GONZALES: She steals my clothes more than I steal her clothes.
RACHEL GONZALES: That is so not true.
VITALI: A sister, daughter, friend, and she’s trans in Texas, a state that’s one of the most restrictive in the country.
LIBBY” GONZALES: I love being here, and I love my friends, and despite everything that’s wrong with our state. I love it here.
VITALI: So why are you leaving?
LIBBY” GONZALES: Because it’s no longer safe for us.
VITALI: So the Gonzalez family is leaving.
RACHEL GONZALES: Already crying.
VITALI: Not just Texas, but America.
RACHEL GONZALES: I don’t think it’s one last straw. It was a buildup. We decided as a family that the onslaught that we knew was coming with. This administration was going to make an environment far too unsafe for our family to stay here.
Asked where they were going, mother Rachel said she would “not shar[e] where we’re going because my kids deserve a fresh start” and because of concern for their “safety.”
Vitali added this was something “Rachel knows most other families like theirs can’t make,” which was kind of a dead-giveaway about why they wouldn’t say where as it’ll likely make them seem even more stuck-up.
Vitali also made it just seem normal that a child would start publicly advocating for pro-trans policies at seven-years-old (click “expand”):
VITALI: The Gonzalez family knows the fight. When Texas considered a bathroom bill in 2017, Libby, then just seven years old, testified in Austin.
LIBBY” GONZALES [in 2017]: I am seven years old and I am transgender.
VITALI: As Libby’s gotten older, Texas has passed other restrictions, including a 2021 ban on trans girls in sports.
RACHEL GONZALES: She’s not a competitive athlete, but — but she wanted to be able to do the things that her classmates and friends were doing and that was taken away.
VITALI: In 2022. Governor Greg Abbott instructed the state’s child welfare agency to investigate parents and doctors who provide gender affirming care for trans youth, equating it to child abuse. That’s temporarily blocked now by a court injunction.
RACHEL GONZALES: If that moves, my husband and I will be criminalized for supporting our daughter and making the very best parenting decisions that we possibly can. How can we stay here knowing that that’s a potential?
VITALI: In the wake of their departure, the very bathroom bill that sparked Libby’s activism in the first place is back in front of lawmakers.
LIBBY” GONZALES: It’s just really annoying to see how all of my entire childhood just — [SIGHS]
VITALI: In recent years, Texas has become an epicenter for the national fight over trans rights, reaching a fever pitch with this ad from 2024 —
TRUMP 2024 AD: Kamala’s agenda is paid them, not you.
VITALI: — that left Democrats splintered on the issue.
Later, Vitali closed with more pity-partying: “That political debate, a deeply personal one as Libby prepares for what’s next. [TO LIBBY” GONZALES] What does it feel like that you have to leave now?”
“It feels disappointing, frustrating knowing that so many people don’t think that I should be allowed to be like anyone else, like I don’t deserve to have the rights that everyone else has,” “Libby” replied.
Back live, Vitali shared more from the partisan mom — who appeared on MSNBC’s The Last Word back in October 2021 alongside future Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) to attack what a chyron called the GOP’s “ugly vitriol” — insisted “she wanted to tell this story, to just show people how this issue is more than just politics.”
Vitali closed with a P.S. of sorts:
I’ve spoken to the Gonzalez family since we taped this. They have moved and they’re settling into their new home, getting ready for back to school. They said they were sad to leave the home that they’d always known, but there was also some hope in our conversation about a fresh start, being in a place that’s more pro-trans, has better access to health care, but also doesn’t have them worrying about how every special session or executive order could limit or restrict Libby’s life.
A Nexis search for the child in question — “Libby” Gonzales — garnered dozens of results, going back to early 2017, which included a features in Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Guardian, the San Antonio Express News, Texas Observer, Texas Tribune, and Stephenville Empire-Tribune followed by a guest column on August 17, 2017 in the Dallas Morning News and on-air syrupy report on the August 6, 2017 CNN Newsroom.
That continued two years later with a November 2019 article in NBCNews.com, a profile on the November 7, 2019 episode of ABC’s Nightline.
The Gonzales family resurfaced on the May 24, 2021 as it was CBS This Morning’s turn to kiss the ground they walked on.
Then with CBS, Mireya Villarreal had the fawning piece, gushing: “At home, the Gonzales sisters are often fierce competitors. But over the last few years, they’ve teamed up to fight politicians pushing anti-transgender bills.”
In the piece, Rachel lamented to her there are too many who “don’t know or don’t know that they know transgender individuals” and thus “demonize people.”
This went into the real laugher: “We’re a hundred percent being used as pawns. They are inviting people to debate whether or not our children have a right to exist, whether or not they have a right to public spaces, whether or not they have a right to health care that they deserve, playing sports loving parents.”
Co-host Gayle King said “it’s 2021,” so everyone should get with the times, adding “you go, Libby.”
Between CBS and Rachel’s MSNBC appearance, “Libby” and the Gonzales appeared in major outlets such as the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (again), The New Republic, NBCNews.com (again), and the Houston Chronicle (which also mentioned Gonzales twice in 2017).
2022 brought more eyeballs and attention with the Daily Beast, Agence France-Presse, and The Texas Tribune in February 2022 followed by a prime spot in the July 22, 2022 CNN documentary Deep in the Pockets of Texas.
The next year didn’t see the Gonzales family slink from the bright lights with Nexis showing hits in the U.K.’s The Independent, another stop at The New Republic, and then a new visit to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
Last year, Dallas Voice and even the Associated Press joined the foray.
So, what’s the purpose of listing all these hits? Take these examples as what can happen when the liberal media try to pass off average, innocuous, working-class Americans when a simple search could reveal they’re a savvy political operator with a particular agenda.
