Eric Lendrum has told followers to vandalize LGBTQ+ art displays and to stop LGBTQ+-inclusive education “by any means necessary.”
Eric Lendrum, a speechwriter for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has expressed racist, antisemitic, and anti-LGBTQ+ views on social media and in podcast appearances as recently as this year. The DHS, led by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, has defended Lendrum by pointing out his free speech rights.
Lendrum is currently listed as a DHS speechwriter. He previously worked as a press assistant for the Department of the Interior during the first Trump administration.
From December 2017 to March 2025 — the same month he reported started working at DHS — Lendrum also wrote for conservative website American Greatness, and hosted his The Right Take podcast from at least January 2021 to May 2023, according to NOTUS, which first reported on his hateful digital footprint.
In one December 2021 American Greatness post, he defended the MAGA rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol building on January 6 as “peaceful protesters,” and compared what he described as the “dehumanization” of American conservatives to that of enslaved Africans in the U.S. and Jews in Nazi Germany.
On his podcast, Lendrum described seeing Democratic members of Congress “crouching under their chairs” during the January 6 insurrection as “gratifying.” In an October 2022 episode, he endorsed the white supremacist “great replacement theory” as “real.” The racist and anti-Semitic white supremacist theory claims that rich Jews want to “replace” white Americans and Westerners with non-white immigrants and people of color (especially Black people and Muslims) to fundamentally change the nation’s racial makeup and political culture.
As NOTUS notes, on an April 2023 episode, Lendrum vowed to “always properly deadname tr**ny freaks” and to continue using the anti-trans slur.
“I will keep calling them tr**nies because I know it’s derogatory, and I know they freakin’ hate it. That’s why I deadname them. That’s why I use their original pronouns,” he said. “You control the language. Don’t give these freaks an inch on the language.”
Even more disturbingly, he argued that “We need to eradicate transgenderism. Wipe it off the face of the Earth. Destroy it. Get rid of it.” Lendrum did clarify that he was “not saying get rid of the people. I’m saying eliminate the ideology. Cure these people.” However, as NOTUS notes, he did not include a similar disclaimer in a November 2024 X post calling for trans eradication.
“The evil ideology of transgenderism must be ERADICATED from the face of the earth, once and for all. Nothing of it must remain,” he wrote. “Real justice must be done.”
Much of Lendrum’s anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric cited in the NOTUS report comes from his X account, @realEricLendrum, where he also described asylum seekers as “illegal scum” in a September 2023 post.
According to the outlet, his April 2023 post equated trans people to “child molesters.” That same month, he responded to trans activists protesting against Florida’s restrictions on teaching about sexuality and gender identity in schools, writing that “This must be stopped, by any means necessary.”
In a February 2024 post seemingly responding to the arrest of a 19-year-old for defacing a rainbow-colored intersection dedicated to the victims and survivors of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, he called on “more people” to “go out and actively vandalize that hideous display, in a further show of solidarity and a middle finger to the gay agenda.”
In August 2024, he posted that being LGBTQ+ “literally is a choice.”
“There is no ‘gay gene,’” he wrote. “And if being ‘trans’ isn’t a choice, then why do people have to undergo certain treatments in order to ‘become trans’?” Almost all major American medical and psychological associations consider sexual orientation and gender identity to be determined by a combination of inborn genetics and external social factors that are primarily outside of a person’s choosing.
After Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde pleaded with President Donald Trump to have “mercy” on LGBTQ+ people and immigrants at a prayer service ahead of his second inauguration in January, Lendrum attacked Budde on X.
“Lock this freak up,” he wrote, adding that children who identify as LGBTQ+ “are being sexually and psychologically abused by their parents.” His rhetoric echoes that of numerous right-wing politicians and influencers who think that queer people and allies are “grooming” and “sexualizing” children simply by existing and acknowledging the existence of other queer individuals.
According to NOTUS, a description of Lendrum’s role as speechwriter on the DHS Office of Public Affairs’ website specifies that his duties include preparing “speeches, talking points, editorials, Congressional testimony, video scripts, web content and other written content” for DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. As the outlet notes, the agency has drawn criticism in recent weeks for a social media post aimed at recruiting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents that appeared to reference a notorious 1978 White Nationalist book.
NOTUS and other outlets reported that DHS has declined to answer questions about Lendrum’s hateful comments or its vetting process, responding only with a link to the text of the First Amendment, which says (in part): “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.”
