Megyn Kelly has been one of the loudest voices in conservative media when it comes to protecting women’s sports.
Kelly didn’t pull any punches in her latest feud.
And now Kelly torched Caitlin Clark for one awful surrender to the woke mob.
What Sophie Cunningham Said That Started All of This
Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham lit a fuse last month when an ESPN profile asked her about her views on transgender athletes competing in women’s sports.
Cunningham did not hedge. “I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,'” she told ESPN. “I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”
She did not walk it back. When pressed again before a subsequent game, Cunningham said, “I said what I said. I think it’s kind of common sense.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defended Cunningham after she reiterated her support for barring biological males from women’s sports. “Men should not be playing in women’s sports. It’s completely ludicrous that anyone could support that,” Leavitt told reporters, calling the backlash against Cunningham “astonishing” and accusing critics of being out of touch with public opinion on the issue.
The left-wing backlash inside the WNBA was swift and predictable. Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve wore a “Trans kids belong” T-shirt before a game against the Fever and spoke with Cunningham at midcourt. The league’s activist wing made clear which side it was on.
Through all of it, Clark said nothing publicly. She had not spoken to reporters since the Cunningham story broke. That ended after a loss to the Minnesota Lynx in early August.
Clark Punts, Kelly Unloads
Reporters finally got Clark on the record. The answer she gave was not exactly a barn-burner.
“I think, for us, it’s not really a discussion we really have in our locker room,” Clark said. “I think it’s for leagues and the governing bodies to work with their athletes to find solutions, but our focus is on basketball. That’s what we talk about and how we can get wins, and, obviously, we didn’t do that tonight.”
Clark declined to answer a follow-up question, simply replying, “I just answered for you.”
Kelly was not buying it. On her podcast The Megyn Kelly Show, she went on a five-minute tirade that pulled no punches — at Clark, at the coaches, at the whole culture inside women’s basketball.
“Sophie Cunningham has shown incredible courage, Caitlin Clark has not, and these women’s coaches are absolute cowards.”
She kept going. “These women’s coaches are absolute effing cowards, and we have taken one step forward, two steps back when it comes to this issue. I am sick of people who don’t know anything about this spewing their ignorance all over the internet, whether it’s verbally or through their dumb T-shirts or the attacks on the Sophie Cunningham who simply spoke truth about how it’s not fair to allow men to compete in women’s sports.”
Kelly also singled out Clark directly. “If this is the fact that there’s this much backlash against her shows we’re not nearly as far along on this issue as I thought we were, and I’m sorry, Caitlin Clark was directly asked to speak on it, and she was cowardly! She refused to do it.”
Kelly added that she was “very disappointed in Caitlin Clark, and I’m proud of Sophie Cunningham, who, by the way, does nothing other than have Caitlin’s back.”
Kelly also posted a single word on X: “Coward.”
Portnoy Fires Back Hard
Dave Portnoy has been one of Caitlin Clark’s loudest defenders in sports media for years. He was not about to let this one go.
“Absolute moron/idiot to call Caitlin a coward for this answer,” Portnoy wrote in reply to Kelly. “1st of all you don’t even know how she feels on this issue and more importantly she doesn’t owe it to you or anybody else to be your political talking point. She just wants to play ball. Total coward cheap shot.”
Kelly fired back at Portnoy and told him to stand down. “Why don’t you sit this one out since you didn’t even have any idea today ‘how big a problem’ this is,” she wrote.
And there it sat — two of the bigger personalities in conservative-leaning media publicly at each other’s throats over whether a 24-year-old basketball player owed anyone a political statement after a game her team just lost.
Kelly Has a Point, But So Does Portnoy
The question of transgender males competing in women’s sports is not a fringe concern or a culture war distraction cooked up by cable news hosts. It is a real and documented fairness issue that affects female athletes at every level of competition. Cunningham’s position — that young girls deserve protected spaces in athletics — is a mainstream view held by the overwhelming majority of Americans, backed by the White House, and now the subject of federal policy. Kelly is right that it matters.
But Portnoy is also right that nobody elected Caitlin Clark to be a political spokesperson. She is a basketball player. She is also, at 24 years old, navigating a league where the loudest voices have been hostile to her since she arrived. Asking her to voluntarily walk into that fire on behalf of a cause she was never asked to champion — and then calling her a coward when she declines — is a stretch
Cunningham, for her part, has earned the respect she is getting. She said what she believed, stood by it under genuine pressure, and did not cave when the league’s activist class turned on her. That takes real guts. The question is whether it was ever Clark’s fight to pick up in the first place.
Kelly’s frustration with the broader WNBA coaching culture is understandable. The left-wing posturing inside women’s basketball has grown tiresome to a lot of fans who just want to watch a good game.
Sources: Mediaite, The Megyn Kelly Show, ESPN, Complex, BroBible, The Blast, Globe Magazine, Washington Times, Christian Post