The anti-LGBTQ Trump pick in AZ, Marty O’Donnell (or as we like to call him, MAGA Marty), spent decades writing the music millions of gamers grew up on — the Halo theme, the Destiny soundtrack.
Now he’s a Trump-endorsed candidate for Congress in one of the most competitive House districts in the country, and he’s on video describing LGBTQ+ Americans as part of an ‘existential threat’ to the nation.
In a clip that surfaced on X on July 17, first reported by LGBTQ Nation, O’Donnell was asked about his vision for America. His answer: the country is standing on a cliff, staring into an abyss of Marxism and anti-Western philosophy.
Then he named who he believes lives in that abyss — “the LGBTQ+ people, the Islamists, the Marxists, they’re all together now.”
He wasn’t done. Later in the same interview, he took aim at Pride itself, calling it one of the seven deadly sins and declaring himself all for “bringing back shame.”
Shame. For existing. That’s the platform.
The Denial That Debunks Itself
After the clip spread, O’Donnell pushed back on X, insisting that “Marxists are an existential threat to our constitutional republic” and accusing the Left of lying about him because his campaign is strong.
There’s one problem: he shared the recording himself. Anyone can watch it.
He didn’t stop at Marxists — he explicitly listed LGBTQ+ people in the same breath, as part of the same “abyss.”
His denial isn’t a clarification. It’s a bet that his supporters won’t press play.
Why This Race Matters
O’Donnell isn’t a fringe podcast guest.
He’s the Republican nominee in Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District, running to unseat Democratic Rep. Susie Lee, who has held the seat since 2019.
He won his June primary after Trump gave him his “Complete and Total Endorsement” and the National Republican Congressional Committee pulled him into its MAGA Majority program.
NV-03 is a true swing district in the Las Vegas suburbs. Trump carried it in 2016 and 2024; Biden flipped it in 2020.
With the House majority hanging on a handful of seats, this is exactly the kind of race that decides which party controls Congress after November 3.
In other words: a man who says openly that LGBTQ+ Americans are a threat to the country could hold a deciding vote on their rights.
A Pattern, Not a Slip
None of this is new for O’Donnell — it’s just newly relevant. The receipts go back years:
- The “recruitment” lie. The Advocate reviewed his podcast archive and found a June 2025 episode where he nodded along as Liberty University executive Ryan Helfenbein pushed the oldest smear in the anti-gay playbook — “They don’t reproduce. They recruit” — and warned parents that the LGBTQ+ movement was coming for their children. That lie has been used to justify discrimination against gay and trans people for half a century. O’Donnell agreed with it on air.
- Marriage equality. He has publicly argued that marriage means one man and one woman, full stop — a direct rejection of the freedom to marry that more than 700,000 same-sex couples in America rely on.
- Project 2025. In 2024 he tweeted that he agreed with just about everything in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 — the blueprint that continues to target LGBTQ+ and women’s rights under this administration.
- The culture war day job. Last year he wrote a blog post urging gamers to fight back against DEI, complaining that character creators let players choose a “body type” instead of a gender. He also claimed LGBTQ+ people “co-opted” the rainbow and framed the whole thing as us versus them.
One more detail worth remembering: before Trump’s endorsement transformed his career, O’Donnell called Trump an “idiot” in 2016 and said he loathed him in 2017.
The conviction politician turns out to be flexible on at least one thing.
The Sanitized Version
Visit O’Donnell’s campaign site and you’ll find none of this.
It’s all affordability, small business, “families first.”
The existential-threat talk, the shame talk, the recruitment lie — those are saved for Right-wing shows and his X feed, where the base can hear them and swing voters hopefully won’t.
That’s the tell. He knows these views lose elections in a district like NV-03, which is full of the very families — including LGBTQ+ families — he refuses to acknowledge.
Voters there deserve to see the whole candidate, not just the campaign brochure.
Nevada’s general election is November 3.
The nostalgia is real — that Halo theme still gives people chills. But nostalgia doesn’t get a vote. People do.
