A guest on The Benny Show said transgender people are "mentally ill," "not born that way," and that this is "what got Charlie Kirk killed."

We rate it false — truth score 0.12, confidence 0.86. Here is the strongest version of that argument, and exactly where it breaks.

The claim lands at 54:22 in the 13 August 2026 episode "James O'Keefe Wears HIJAB, Goes Undercover to EXPOSE Mass Muslim Voter Fraud: They're Going to Jail." The transcript does not name the speaker, so we attribute it to an unnamed guest, not to host Benny Johnson.

Three assertions are stacked into one sentence: that trans people are mentally ill, that the identity is produced by trauma, and that this caused Charlie Kirk's death. The steelman is real — trans people do report higher rates of adverse childhood experiences and distress, the UK's Cass Review found t ...