Gaines for Girls with Riley Gaines - July 24, 2026


Caitlin Clark, Sophie Cunningham, and the WNBA’s Star Problem


Episode Stats


Length

24 minutes

Words per minute

174.79

Word count

4,214

Sentence count

267


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
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00:00:30.000 sophie cunningham the woman that you are i've always enjoyed watching sophie cunningham beyond
00:00:39.900 the fact that we've been able to develop a friendship over the past year she's someone
00:00:43.640 who's always at caitlin clark's defense which means a lot when you're in a league that wants
00:00:48.160 to seemingly destroy caitlin clark so she's fiercely loyal she's a sports illustrated
00:00:53.320 model, swimsuit model. So objectively beautiful, like long blonde hair, tan skin, very thin,
00:01:01.540 leggy. She had this baptism that went viral on social media. It was really beautiful. Like you
00:01:07.660 have this again, woman who has all this notoriety and growing fame, increasing her public platform.
00:01:13.740 And with that platform, she chose to declare her life to the Lord very proudly. So that was super
00:01:18.620 cool. And another reason how she sets herself apart, obviously the pointing meme, come on.
00:01:23.840 It's so good. It's like one of my favorite memes that has come from the internet, certainly as of
00:01:28.460 recent. And if basketball doesn't work out, she can be a ring girl. Sophie Cunningham is like the
00:01:33.260 queen of side quests because this is her at a UFC match doing the little round cards, doing her
00:01:40.120 little viral pointing meme. You can hear based on these videos that I saw online, the audience loves
00:01:46.840 her. The people, the fans in attendance to that UFC match, they're cheering, they're roaring.
00:01:51.380 It's incredibly loud, but people in general love her. Earlier this week, ESPN came out with this
00:01:56.940 piece, which by the way, this was never a given for ESPN to do a glowing piece on one of their
00:02:02.200 star athletes who is white and beautiful and who seemingly you could piece it together that she
00:02:06.860 just loves America. She loves the Lord. This was never a given from ESPN owned by Disney. That
00:02:13.080 should tell you everything that you need to know the piece is titled love her or hate her sophie
00:02:17.120 cunningham will not be ignored i'll read you just a little bit it says cunningham like the wmba has
00:02:21.800 become a cultural flashpoint the league's footprint has never been bigger and the chorus of voices
00:02:25.580 around it has never been louder all-star voting and sponsorship opportunities whistles and non-whistles
00:02:30.200 who and who does not get to capture this attention economy all have become proxies for debates about
00:02:34.840 race and gender identity and politics squarely in the morass it's cunningham a white conventionally
00:02:39.880 attractive, attention-grabbing reserve player who is not one of the league's all-stars, but is one
00:02:44.860 of its most magnetic stars. Goes on to say, you might delight in her or you might decry her.
00:02:50.180 Either way, she draws you in. True. So whether you call Cunningham an enforcer or a dirty player,
00:02:55.080 a role model or a culture warrior, fearless or shameless, brave or brazen, you will keep calling
00:03:00.400 her and she won't mind, which perhaps as much as anything is the key to her ascension. The
00:03:05.440 journalist interviewed Cunningham for the article and it has a quote from her here and it says,
00:03:08.680 people love me or they really freaking hate me. I just don't care. Sophie says, you see so many
00:03:13.020 people change or try to fit into a box. She says, I don't even know what that box is. It's a fake
00:03:17.560 box. Everyone wants to look the same. Everyone wants the same vibe. Screw that. I'm going to be
00:03:21.820 me. Sophie says she never really lets the hate get to her. She says there's some corners of the
00:03:26.480 internet that label her as MAGA Barbie, which she says is entirely just projection based on what
00:03:33.300 she looks like, based on where she's from, based on the things that she has weighed in on before,
00:03:37.700 such as protecting women's sports. In this piece, she says, I get a lot of negative feedback from
00:03:43.520 me hating trans. And I'm like, I never once said that. She says, I think that I'm here to extend
00:03:48.880 love, but I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls
00:03:54.560 in a locker room or young girls in sports who shouldn't have to go against biological men.
00:03:59.260 This maybe sounds like to your normal average person, like not a very novel concept, right?
00:04:04.760 especially in the year 2026. We had this debate in 2020, 2021, 2022, and the years that have
00:04:11.060 followed, but now President Trump is in the Oval Office. It's easy to say that men aren't women
00:04:15.920 and men shouldn't play in women's sports. I'm here to tell you, if you're in Sophie Cunningham's
00:04:20.060 position, it's not easy to say that. It's incredibly difficult. It requires immense
00:04:25.060 courage. If you're Sophie Cunningham playing in the WNBA, which is like the most woke league of
00:04:30.680 all time in the history of ever, it takes immense courage to say exactly what she did. And it makes
00:04:35.400 her really the first current high level female athlete playing in a professional league that has
00:04:41.760 said this. She said she wants to protect girls in locker rooms and protect girls sports, which
00:04:46.260 isn't that surprising considering it's girls sports that have given her the opportunities
00:04:51.540 that she has had to succeed. Sophie Cunningham literally says in this article, the article that
00:04:56.340 I read to you, that she is not anti-trans, that she just wants to spread love. She just doesn't
00:05:02.380 want women to feel uncomfortable in intimate areas of undressing, such as a locker room.
00:05:07.620 And guess what? This is the most normal, rational way of thinking that most people 100% agree with.
00:05:14.360 Sophie's not afraid of trans women. So the whole transphobic, it's just stupid. She doesn't have
00:05:20.000 an irrational fear of transgender. She even says it in the article. That's not what this is. She's
00:05:25.880 just simply not going to agree to having males and women's spaces, like our bathrooms, our locker
00:05:31.740 rooms, in our sports, hijacking the term phobic or isms, any of the isms that we're called for
00:05:38.380 having the beliefs that we do. They just don't work anymore. Well, I should clarify, they don't
00:05:43.120 work if you don't let them. And that's what Sophie does really, really, really well. She's just done
00:05:49.220 playing along with it. And you see what the response has been since? It's notoriety, it's
00:05:54.300 credibility, it's sponsorships, it's opportunities, it's fame, it's an even bigger platform. And to be
00:05:59.740 very clear, I don't think Sophie is doing or saying what she does because she wants fame.
00:06:04.960 Actually, I'll put myself in her shoes. You have to imagine that she was concerned that she would
00:06:10.720 lose opportunities. Maybe still she's even even concerned about that. But she said it and she
00:06:15.580 stood by it because she thinks that's the right and the moral and the just thing to do.
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00:06:50.700 I just truly cannot fathom being so stupid as to continue to fight over this point that men can be women and they should play in women's sports, a point that is not only regressive, but is unfathomably minute.
00:07:08.500 And when pressed by this in the following days, of course, Sophie Cunningham doubled down. Let's watch.
00:07:12.200 On that same vein in that story with ESPN, you talked about wanting to protect young girls who shouldn't have to go against biological men. Can you expand your viewpoint on that?
00:07:20.200 I mean, I think I said what I said. I think it's kind of common sense. And I think I'll always
00:07:25.640 believe in that. I think it's really important to protect children. And that's little girls
00:07:30.260 who are also involved in that category. And so I stand on what I said. And I always believe that.
00:07:36.740 I saw this. You know what it reminded me of? It reminded me of Sidney Sweeney. I remember last
00:07:41.100 year when that horrible journalist, she was pressing Sidney Sweeney and attempting to get
00:07:46.460 her to apologize for doing this ad with American Eagle. You remember the one where it's like,
00:07:52.120 genes are passed down from person to person, often determining things like eye color and
00:07:57.360 hair color, whatever. It was kind of an odd ad, but people loved it. I liked it, right? But it
00:08:02.660 came with people saying that Sydney Sweeney is a Nazi and that she's advocating for eugenics
00:08:06.800 because she's white and she has blue hair. If she had blue hair, she would be on the other side
00:08:10.460 of this debate. The people who are calling her a Nazi, she has blonde hair, blue eyes,
00:08:14.800 and people hated her for it, it made her a Nazi to recognize that she is objectively beautiful.
00:08:22.640 But when that journalist or reporter attempted to get Cindy Sweeney to apologize,
00:08:26.760 she just wouldn't do it. I saw this video of Sophie and that's what I saw. I saw a woman who
00:08:31.240 has more courage and poise under leftist ideological testing than maybe even some of
00:08:39.140 biggest right-wing think tanks really do. She's potentially risking her very livelihood for saying
00:08:45.500 the things that she said in that article, considering the WNBA's far, far, far left
00:08:50.480 culture. And I say potentially risking because it is worth noting we are living in a totally
00:08:56.080 different political, social, cultural climate in 2026 than we were in 2020. I think if she said
00:09:02.500 this in 2020, it wouldn't be a potential that she's risking her very livelihood. Her very
00:09:07.120 livelihood probably would be over. But the thing I think that really separates Sophie, it's not
00:09:14.020 about the belief or the points that she was making. Because again, everyone knows what she is
00:09:18.100 saying to be plainly and objectively true. It's just simply the refusal to be gaslit. And in
00:09:25.120 today's world, that's rare. And it does require courage. I look at Sophie Cunningham as like the
00:09:31.360 anti-megan rapinoe who last week was on the view let's watch let's just like pull back a little
00:09:37.600 at first it was like well nobody likes women's sports and nobody wants to watch it or there was
00:09:42.160 you know abuse happening and nobody seemed to care now all of a sudden we're going to use
00:09:46.720 a vulnerable group of people in the trans community to be like oh well we're just protecting
00:09:51.280 women sports and we care so much about it only megan rapinoe would view protecting women's
00:09:56.320 sports by ensuring they're only for women, real women as an attack on women. Um, she was actually
00:10:03.360 on the view to discuss this was following the world cup and how the men's team is having to
00:10:09.480 split their earnings with the women's team. And so she was on there to talk about the progress
00:10:13.700 that she had made. Uh, and she, she did like individually as one person, she dedicated a lot
00:10:19.520 of time and resources and, and a lot of personal effort to advancing women's pay in sports. Lots
00:10:27.360 of ground being that had been made there by Megan Rapinoe. And so she was there to talk about how
00:10:31.880 her work there and why the men's national soccer team subsidizing the women's national soccer team
00:10:39.360 is actually a good thing and how it's fair and equitable and whatever. Again, not the point of
00:10:43.800 today's episode. So on one hand, she's there to talk about the progress that's been made for women.
00:10:48.180 And on the other hand, in another segment, she's talking about how basically she wants to roll back all of it by ensuring women don't actually have an opportunity to compete and to succeed like she did.
00:11:00.060 And can I just make the point really quick?
00:11:02.960 No one, no one.
00:11:05.000 She said there's a bill in Washington to inspect genitals.
00:11:08.400 That is a total lie.
00:11:11.040 That is not happening.
00:11:12.980 No one is inspecting anyone's genitals.
00:11:15.860 she talks about a sex verification test first of all only happening to olympic athletes that's not
00:11:21.620 every young woman and girl okay olympic athletes who are overwhelmingly in favor of this actually
00:11:28.020 are receiving a sex verification test to determine their sex it is a cheek swab it's not a genital
00:11:34.660 inspection it's a cheek swab a saliva test you can test it through urine i guess but it is a
00:11:39.840 saliva test screening for the sry gene which is only present on the y chromosome which is only
00:11:45.700 present in males. So this whole idea that girls are going to have to pull down their pants and
00:11:50.980 a Republican lawmaker is going to stare at their genitals, that is not happening. But even to that
00:11:57.560 point, these are things that happen in physicals, which should be required to play sports. And they
00:12:03.200 have been. Historically, they have been. That is a total fabricated lie. That's not even like a
00:12:07.060 stretch of the imagination. There is no bill in Washington, D.C. that is going to enforce
00:12:12.500 genital inspections on young girls. That is absurd. Hear me when I say I have never advocated
00:12:19.280 for that, and I would never advocate for that. I think it's kind of funny how Megan Rapinoe says
00:12:23.800 black women are going to be tested first if we kick men out of women's sports. I'm like,
00:12:29.240 so what are you saying? Are you saying that black women look like men? Because if we're going to do
00:12:33.620 this whole pinpoint racism type thing and screech it from the top of our lungs, I don't know.
00:12:40.200 just kind of toeing the line, Megan. We are in peak summer, which means you're probably in a
00:12:48.160 bikini. You're probably by the pool or going on vacation to the beach. I want to tell you,
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00:13:25.180 just my experience. Cowboy actually ran a clinical study where 83% of participants reported improved
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00:14:40.460 use my code Riley Gaines. That is R I L E Y G A I N E S at checkout. That's 25% off with code
00:14:48.400 Riley Gaines at cowboy colostrum.com slash Riley Gaines. Anyways, it's always the people though,
00:14:55.460 who like talk about women's rights, who are the most anti-woman. And going back to the whole
00:15:00.140 activist journalist thing, there was a piece in USA Today by Nancy Armour. And this is her most
00:15:04.740 recent on Caitlin Clark. There's been a lot of bad takes on Caitlin Clark, but USA Today's Nancy
00:15:12.140 Armour, this is the worst one by a mile. In this piece, Nancy Armour is saying that Caitlin Clark
00:15:20.400 is putting black and queer WNBA players in danger by flopping,
00:15:26.740 by her fouls, her flagrant fouls, and by arguing with the refs.
00:15:31.640 I'm going to read you an actual paragraph from this piece.
00:15:35.800 It shouldn't need reminding this country has an awful history of black people being harmed,
00:15:40.340 even killed in the name of defending white women.
00:15:43.860 The WNBA's all-star game this weekend is in Chicago, Emmett Till's hometown,
00:15:47.820 and a local art gallery is currently hosting an exhibit imagining his life if he hadn't been
00:15:52.180 lynched. While it's incumbent on the WNBA to do more to protect its players, not Caitlin Clark,
00:15:57.620 its black and queer players, there should also be an expectation on Clark to recognize the
00:16:02.560 wider consequences of her actions. Do you realize what Nancy Armour is doing there?
00:16:09.060 she's connecting Emmett Till's lynching to Caitlin Clark's talent and skill set and behavior on the
00:16:18.320 basketball court. Excuse me? Excuse me. These people are insane. They're insane. They have
00:16:27.380 lost their ability to think rationally. That is literally dead and gone. In what world do those
00:16:34.100 two things connect. Honestly, even after reading the piece, I don't know where she's going with
00:16:39.000 this. The refs don't take matters into their own hands because they don't protect Caitlin Clark.
00:16:43.600 That's like the whole discourse that's been online and anyone who watches Caitlin Clark play
00:16:48.920 would be able to tell you that. Those are two of the dumbest paragraphs that I have ever seen
00:16:54.600 published by sports media in the history of sports. Maybe it's just like an all-time rage
00:17:00.280 Bader. Like dropping Emmett Till's name in an article about the WNBA all-star game. That's
00:17:06.660 got to be an all-time Rage Bader. I don't know. Maybe I'm falling for it. Maybe this is what
00:17:10.480 Nancy Armour wanted. Journalists and mainstream media just can't even be parodied because their
00:17:16.260 real posts are already unbelievable. If I were Caitlin Clark, I would look into some sort of
00:17:21.020 legal action because what she's doing here, what Nancy Armour is doing in connecting the two,
00:17:26.040 is she's basically saying that Caitlin Clark could end up being responsible for someone being
00:17:31.920 murdered. Like all it takes is one unhinged person to read this and to do the opposite and to take
00:17:38.360 Caitlin Clark out because they view her as causing harm. I wonder if we'll see the WNBA say anything
00:17:45.020 on this. I imagine we won't. I wonder if USA Today will have any recourse for Nancy Armour.
00:17:50.720 I imagine they won't. Therefore, I would love to see Caitlin Clark, I mean, pursue some sort of
00:17:57.260 legal matter. Because if someone said that about me to this very large publication, large, I guess,
00:18:06.260 in its history, no one reads USA Today anymore, then I would have something to say about it.
00:18:13.500 But the WNBA won't say anything about it because they're so committed to self-imploding.
00:18:17.420 They subsidize everything.
00:18:19.580 If I was a higher up at the WNBA, I would advise the board or the GMs, whoever, to lean in to Sophie Cunningham and Caitlin Clark.
00:18:30.780 Right. If like the goal is to make money, which any business, which the WNBA, it's a business, an organization, any league that should be a goal.
00:18:39.140 Right. You want to be profitable. You want to have money, more money coming in than you're putting out.
00:18:45.800 that's kind of just like basic economics. If that's the goal, then I would say lean into
00:18:52.580 Sophie Cunningham, lean into Caitlin Clark. But that's not the goal of the WNBA. They've been
00:18:58.320 presented these like golden geese. It was golden goose, I think, for a while with Caitlin Clark
00:19:03.760 being the main reason people were watching, tuning in to the WNBA. But now I would say
00:19:08.200 golden geese because I really do think Sophie Cunningham is a part of that now. The WNBA is
00:19:13.160 doing actually the exact opposite because they are unserious. So much so that the WNBA Players
00:19:18.200 Union is not allowing brands to monetize Sophie Cunningham's point. You know, the point. They're
00:19:25.980 not allowing brands to monetize that because it says it would be profiting off of player conduct
00:19:33.380 from a confrontation between our members. Color me shocked. Of course, the bitter, maladjusted,
00:19:42.480 mostly women in the WNBA would conspire to sabotage and tear down the league's
00:19:48.480 one, a few, normal, attractive women. It's like textbook intersex competition and resentment.
00:19:58.120 It's the biggest meme in sports right now. The White House posted about it. The UFC,
00:20:05.860 Max Holloway reacted to it in the UFC cage.
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00:20:39.180 connexontario.ca sheen is selling shirts online and the wmba players union just banned its own
00:20:46.220 partners from making a single dollar off of it a league that reportedly lost like 40 million
00:20:51.620 dollars last year and whose players have been fighting through a cba battle over pay
00:20:57.060 the most marketable moment in the league's entire season if not ever fell into its lap
00:21:03.400 for free mind you they didn't have to pay anything for it every brand in the licensing program you
00:21:09.380 had to imagine wanted it right uh 2k lids the union said no the good news is that sophie
00:21:17.200 cunningham can license it herself without the you know you take off the wmba logo she could build
00:21:22.840 a merch operation from scratch uh mid-season and probably make more money actually definitely
00:21:29.600 make more money than she's making with her salary, being a part of the WNBA. And I hope she does.
00:21:38.460 I hope she does. I hope she monetizes that point, sell those shirts, capitalize on every single bit
00:21:45.060 of deserved attention that you're getting. What you're selling, I'm buying. People across the
00:21:50.500 world are buying because she has that effect. Last thing, re WNBA, Caitlin Clark is now officially
00:21:57.060 the NBA 2K27 deluxe edition cover athlete. I just say that to say, again, hopefully the league,
00:22:06.480 because it seems as if league affiliates and partners are leaning in now, hopefully the league
00:22:13.140 begins to lean in. I'll never forget the asinine decision by 2K to keep Caitlin Clark off the cover
00:22:21.340 in 2026 and to put Angel Reese on it. Caitlin Clark is the face of the league. She has been
00:22:27.220 the face of the league. Now she's got a little sidekick in Sophie Cunningham. They are a dynamic
00:22:32.080 duo. Fans love them. People love them. Kids love these girls. Here's a video of Sophie Cunningham
00:22:39.140 recently at a kid's camp, and they're all doing the point. That visual, it means a lot. It says
00:22:45.060 something. That's how you inspire the next generation. Not by people like Megan Rapinoe,
00:22:49.420 who tries to like fear monger into thinking young girls are going to have to get their genitals
00:22:56.080 inspected in order to play sports or in order to exist at all as women. It's not true. So in a
00:23:04.140 world full of Megan Rapinoe's via Sophie Cunningham. Thank you guys for watching the Riley
00:23:10.160 Gaines show. You can subscribe right here. We have new episodes every single Tuesday and Friday at 10
00:23:15.360 a.m. Eastern time. And we are covering everything from pop culture to politics, to deep dives,
00:23:20.380 to motherhood, sports, all of that and more. We want to hear from you, though. What is it
00:23:24.140 that you want to hear? Comment down below. We can't wait to see you next time.
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