Report: Dave Chappelle's "Some of my best friends are trans" Daphne Dorman story from The Closer doesn't hold up

Michael Hobbes Substack

Journalist and You're Wrong About podcast co-host Michael Hobbes delved into Chappelle's claim that Dorman, whom he mentioned in 2019's Sticks and Stones special, committed suicide after being bullied on social media after defending the comedian. In The Closer, Chappelle said "the trans community dragged that b*tch all over Twitter. For days, they was going in on her, and she was holding her own ’cause she’s funny. But six days after that wonderful night I described to you my friend Daphne killed herself.” Hobbes says Chappelle is "making a serious accusation. Blaming a specific person or group for 'hounding' someone into suicide amounts to a charge of murder. Given the complex nature of mental illness and self-harm, cases where the facts warrant such an accusation are extremely rare. So what’s the evidence that online bullying from trans people led Daphne Dorman to take her own life? None. There is none. Chappelle’s wording implies that Dorman’s suicide happened shortly after she sent the tweet supporting him, but her post is from August 2019 and she killed herself in mid-October, nearly six weeks later. In the interim period, I could find no trace of online harassment or abuse. Her tweet currently has hundreds of replies, but they’re almost universally from Chappelle’s fans after The Closer came out. Back in 2019, according to archive.org, the tweet had just 12 replies. Another, jokier tweet about supporting Chappelle, had 9. Of the contemporaneous replies that have been archived, none are critical." Hobbes adds: "None of this means Dorman wasn’t criticized for her association with Chappelle. Other Twitter sleuths have found her debating the content of his special and whether their friendship meant that he accepted her. Maybe she felt attacked by these conversations. Maybe some abusive tweets have been deleted. Maybe she got nasty DMs or lost friends. We don’t know what being online looked or felt like to Dorman during those six weeks." But if trans activists were really dragging Dorman for days, they "left no public evidence of this whatsoever," says Hobbes, adding: "Dorman, as far as I can tell, had roughly 600 Twitter followers at the time she defended Chappelle. She barely used Twitter and most of her posts have likes and retweets in the single digits. Maybe you want to argue that Dorman would have faced criticism if more people knew about her support of Chappelle, but the most plausible read of the evidence is that the internet simply didn’t notice." Hobbes adds that "the narrative that Dorman was 'hounded to death' by trans people relies exclusively on Chappelle’s word....Speculating on the 'real' cause of someone’s suicide, especially someone I’ve never met, feels reductive and gross so I’m going to stop here. I don’t know why Dorman killed herself and it’s none of my business. What I do know is that Chappelle is telling a story that just so happens to perfectly align with the narrative pushed by the rabid, rapidly metastasizing anti-trans movement."