Marty O’Donnell, the composer behind the original Halo trilogy’s score and the Republican nominee for Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District, says SacAnime disinvited him from a planned 25th anniversary Halo reunion this September after a former Kamala Harris campaign-linked account badly mischaracterized comments he made about Western civilization back in July. O’Donnell broke the news himself on X Tuesday, writing that he was disappointed by the disinvitation and asking whether cancel culture was truly dead after 2024.
O’Donnell’s connection to Halo runs to the franchise’s origin. Working alongside Michael Salvatori at Bungie, he composed the iconic theme first unveiled at the 1999 MacWorld trailer and scored every mainline Halo game through Halo: Reach, along with later work on Destiny before a contentious split from Bungie in 2014. For SacAnime’s Halo 25th anniversary celebration over Labor Day weekend in Sacramento, he was never a minor add-on. Cortana voice actress Jen Taylor had already posted excitedly on Instagram about reuniting with O’Donnell and other franchise veterans at the event, and O’Donnell says the convention was still requesting promotional material from him as recently as two weeks before pulling his invitation.
The cancellation notice, which O’Donnell posted as a screenshot, cited “recently reported statements” from his political campaign and said organizers had to act because the LGBTQ staff does not feel comfortable if you attend the event. SacAnime has since scrubbed O’Donnell from its website and deleted its promotional posts about his appearance
Those “recently reported statements” trace back to July 17, when the X account Headquarters, formerly tied to the Kamala HQ rapid-response operation from Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, posted a clip of O’Donnell on The WDW Pro Show under the headline claiming he called for persecuting LGBTQ+ people and treating them as an existential threat. The video tells a different story. O’Donnell’s actual remarks are: “Talk about an existential threat, this is where we are right now. We are on the cliff looking down into the abyss. And the abyss is Marxism, it’s anti-Western philosophy. There’s a weird alliance of all these groups who like to pretend they’re oppressed. The LGBTQ+ people, the Islamists, the Marxists, they’re all together now.”
O’Donnell isn’t a bystander to this fight either. He’s the sitting Republican nominee against Democratic incumbent Rep. Susie Lee in a district Reuters has flagged as one of the closest and most consequential House races in the country, a seat Trump carried narrowly in both 2016 and 2024. President Trump gave O’Donnell his full endorsement in April, calling him a world-class composer and entrepreneur, and O’Donnell went on to win his primary in June with nearly 44% of the vote, well clear of his closest competitor. The NRCC has since opened a campaign field office in Las Vegas for him, with actor Dean Cain appearing at the ribbon-cutting earlier this month.
Given O’Donnell provided Geeks + Gamers with a full statement on the matter:
“In January, I was invited to attend a Halo reunion at SacAnime over Labor Day weekend in Sacramento, CA. I was excited to attend with so many stars, including Jen Taylor and Steve Downs, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Halo with all of our fans. They even asked me to record a video promoting my attendance two weeks ago.
After SacAnime made numerous announcements of my attendance over this last weekend, I was told I was being disinvited because I called Marxism an existential threat. They have removed me from their website and deleted all their posts on social media promoting my appearance.
My existential threat comment has been twisted by my political opponents a lot over the last few weeks and anyone who saw the video knows that to be true. That is why I know it’s not why I have been pulled from SacAnime. I was pulled because I am a Republican candidate for office.
Funny enough, SacAnime’s decision proves my point. Silencing the opposition is a key component of Marxism and that is one reason why Marxism is an existential threat to our country.
I genuinely believed we had put an end to Cancel Culture after the 2024 election but that was just the end to what AOC called “Woke 1” earlier this week. Woke 2 is here and it is just as eager to silence and destroy conservatives as Woke 1.
Unfortunately for them, I can’t be silenced. I will continue to use my voice to speak out against the threats our country faces, especially from Marxists who seek to destroy the United States.”
This isn’t O’Donnell’s first brush with industry-adjacent politics. He’s spoken publicly for years about what he views as ideological decline in gaming and entertainment more broadly, and his congressional run has been explicitly framed around pushing back against what he and his campaign describe as woke overreach in both government and culture. None of that background involves calls for persecuting anyone. It’s standard conservative political rhetoric about ideology and culture, the kind of argument made constantly across cable news and campaign trails without triggering a single disinvitation, right up until a mischaracterized clip from a partisan account gave a convention promoter cover to cut him loose.
Jen Taylor already told her followers she was excited to share a stage with O’Donnell next month. SacAnime scrubbed him from its website instead, citing comments he never actually made.
Does an anime convention pulling a founding Halo composer over a deliberately distorted seven-second clip tell you everything you need to know about who’s actually doing the persecuting here?
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The Headquarters account on X, isn’t even hiding that it’s a pro-Marxist account, who’s only interested in driving the Cancel Pigs. Marty O’Donnell is right about Marxism.
What a sad world we live in nowadays! Is it ever going to stop!?