Old Video Haunts Jesse Ridgway as Abortion Story Dominates Headlines

Sometimes the internet has a way of surfacing exactly what you’d rather it didn’t. For Jesse Ridgway, that moment arrived on Wednesday, June 10, when a 2017 video resurfaced showing him impersonating a person with Down syndrome—a clip that arrived at perhaps the worst possible time, given that his family’s recent abortion decision is dominating headlines.

The 33-year-old influencer, known online as @McJuggerNuggets, attempted to contextualize the old footage by telling TMZ that he was playing a character named Isaac Kalder in what he described as an immersive online series. According to his explanation, the character was supposed to be a persona who hijacked his life, and rapid“identity switches”were meant to fry the character’s brain—a detail he offered as artistic justification rather than mockery. Ridgway framed the video as part of an online art series, not comedy at the expense of people with disabilities.

The timing, however, is brutal. Just over a week earlier, on June 3, Ridgway revealed that he and his wife Ashley had terminated her pregnancy after learning the fetus had Down syndrome. In the video message posted to Facebook on Monday, June 8, Ridgway expressed compassion for women facing similar situations, writing that his wife Ashley deserves support during what he called the hardest of times. Yet here was a nine-year-old clip seemingly contradicting that message—or at least complicating the narrative.

With over 4 million YouTube subscribers and 2 billion lifetime views, Ridgway has built his career on immersive, long-running web series like The Psycho Series and The Devil Inside. Those same narrative-heavy, character-driven videos are now the lens through which audiences are interpreting his past. What he claims was experimental character work now reads differently to many—especially those already skeptical of his family’s recent choices.

The backlash has been real. Ridgway revealed that he and Ashley have been sleeping next to a gun because of alleged death threats. He’s also faced conspiracy theories and intense judgment from followers. Yet he’s vowed to continue sharing his family’s story and expressed gratitude for those offering unconditional support, regardless of their views on the abortion decision itself. Whether the resurfaced video will reignite the firestorm remains to be seen, but it’s a stark reminder that for public figures, the past rarely stays buried.