The YouTube impresario and philanthropist MrBeast, aka Jimmy Donaldson, is not known for being outspoken about his political views. But when it comes to his best friend and collaborator Ava Kris Tyson, Donaldson has made it clear he will not tolerate right-wing transphobes going after his friend.
On June 22, the streamer Nickmercs replied to a now-deleted tweet from Tyson, a longtime friend of Donaldson’s and a hugely popular content creator in his own right, who came out as trans in April 2023. “You should be ashamed of yourself. Leaving behind your wife & child, to play pretend. One day you’ll wake up and realize what you’ve done,” the streamer wrote. (Tyson has a four-year-old son, Tucker, that she shares with her ex-wife Katie, from whom she separated in 2022.)
In response to Nickmercs’ tweet, Tyson lambasted Nickmercs for using her son as “clickbait,” writing, “Trans people can be great parents, them and their ex-partners can have cordial and healthy co-parenting relationships, and anyone who throws a child into internet drama, does give a f**k about ‘saving the kids.'” Her tweet has since been deleted, as have the other posts on her account.
Donaldson also replied to Nickmercs’ tweet, defending Tyson against criticism of her parenting. “Ava is literally always with her kid and doesn’t even go on shoots to spend more time with him,” he wrote. “Tuck man is always smiling, not sure why this rumor is a thing.” Tyson’s ex-wife Katie also issued a statement on X defending her former partner, writing that Tucker is “loved and cared for by both parents,” and that their lives “are both better than ever.”
“Tucker’s life is kept relatively private, as much as it can be, solely because of people like you who try to make a headline topic with a 4-year-old’s life blasted as a headline,” she wrote. (A rep for Donaldson and Tyson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)
This is not the first time Donaldson has publicly defended his friend against bullying and harassment from transphobes. In April 2023, the YouTuber sunnyv2 made a video titled, “Why [Ava Kris] Will Soon Be a Nightmare for MrBeast,” theorizing that Tyson’s transition may cause Donaldson to lose fans. “This is getting absurd,” Donaldson wrote on X in response to a tweet criticizing sunnyv2’s video. “[Ava Kris] isn’t my ‘nightmare’ he’s my fucken friend and things are fine. All this transphobia is starting to piss me off.”
Unfortunately, despite Tyson and his ex’s pleas to leave their family out of public discourse, Nickmercs’ post appears to have ushered in an onslaught of far-right hate from professional transphobes such as Daily Wire host Matt Walsh and Libs of TikTok’s Chaya Raichik. “It should not be legal for a parent to ‘transition.’ All parents who do this are abusers,” Walsh wrote on June 24, quote-tweeting a photo of Tyson and her ex-wife and child prior to her transition. Raichik referred to Tyson’s gender identity as a “mental illness [celebrated by] leftists,” accusing Tyson of “throwing [her] life away.”
The backlash against Tyson’s transition, however, appears to have had little impact on either Donaldson or Tyson’s platforms. Donaldson, who has an eye-watering 289 million subscribers, has garnered 27 million new ones in the last 30 days alone, according to data from SocialBlade. Many MrBeast fans have rallied behind Donaldson and Tyson in the replies on X, with many praising Donaldson for continuing to stand by his friends.
“Mr. Beast’s defense of Ava in the face of immense transphobia in his replies is a win for Pride Month in my books,” wrote one follower. “I don’t care if it’s the bare minimum, the biggest YouTuber in the world says ‘Trans Rights’ and that’s amazing.” Despite the far right’s best efforts to smear Tyson, it seems that MrBeast’s impact far exceeds any of theirs — and to paraphrase a colloquialism from that sector of the internet, they can go ahead and cope harder.
