Bitter pills: The Daily Wire suggests its new vitamins will boost sperm counts and fight “wokeness”
Marketing for The Daily Wire’s latest venture tries to cash in on fear of trans people and drag queens
Written by Mia Gingerich
Published
The Daily Wire announced the launch of a new “men’s lifestyle” company named Responsible Man on May 1, promoting its only current product — a men’s dietary supplement that it says is “designed to help … sharpen brain cognition” and that it suggests will help address what the outlet calls the “increasing health risk” of declining “sperm concentration.”
On April 30, The Daily Wire’s parent company Bentkey Ventures registered the assumed name “Daily Wire Ventures.” The next day, on May 1, it debuted Responsible Man, a new company for men’s health products.
The Daily Wire is promoting Responsible Man as an alternative to “woke” companies and by fearmongering about some of the outlet’s frequent targets, namely gender-affirming care and drag queens, asking its readers, “Do you want to buy your men’s health products from a company that partners with drag queens and supports radical organizations that push gender procedures on children?” Responsible Man’s website uses similar language, promising its customers that “together, we can reclaim masculinity” and claiming that “Emerson’s Vitamins are a simple step towards improving yourself, creating order, and building the future.”
The Daily Wire’s promotion suggests Responsible Man’s products can help address various health issues, including the purported “increasing health risk” of declining “sperm concentration” worldwide, promising to help men stay healthy “for the survival of the human race.”
The company’s only product, a men’s multivitamin, is marketed as being “professionally engineered by medical doctors” to “support your immune system, maintain energy production, sharpen brain cognition, and support the health of your heart and muscles.”
Claims made by The Daily Wire’s new company are not FDA-approved
According to disclaimers on Responsible Man’s website, the claims made to promote the company’s vitamins “have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.” Multivitamins do not need to go through an evaluation process prior to entering the marketplace, and have generally proved ineffective in reducing the risk of heart disease and mental decline.
In the past, The Daily Wire has targeted certain medications used in gender-affirming care for trans youth for their use off-label without FDA approval, even though this is a common practice in prescribing pediatric medications. The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh has been particularly fervent in wielding this point to target gender-affirming care.
The Daily Wire is promoting the new company by targeting Men’s Health magazine
The Daily Wire’s previous ventures into consumer goods have been framed in opposition to specific companies it deemed too “woke,” such as Harry’s Razors and Hershey’s Chocolate, for refusing to advertise with The Daily Wire and featuring a trans woman in an advertisement, respectively. (Jeremy’s Razors and Jeremy’s Chocolate, The Daily Wire’s answers to Harry’s and Hershey’s going “woke,” have received poor feedback from customers.)
The Daily Wire’s promotion of Responsible Man singles out for criticism Men’s Health, the largest men’s lifestyle magazine in the United States. Claiming that Men’s Health was “afraid of manhood itself,” The Daily Wire has declared itself “here to give you a better option.” The lone source of outrage cited by the outlet is a Men’s Health article from November 2021 on “LGBTQ+ Language and Media Literacy.”