The Ben Shapiro Show - July 23, 2026


Sophie Cunningham Refuses to Back Down


Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

202.42

Word count

1,643

Sentence count

117

Harmful content

Misogyny

29

sentences flagged

Toxicity

15

sentences flagged

Hate speech

16

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Sophie Cunningham has been called MAGA Barbie for saying that men should not play against women in sports, and because she says Title IX is good, sports writer Megan Rapino is doubling down on men playing in women s sports.

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Ben Shapiro Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:01.000 I see you, Sophie Cunningham.
00:00:02.000 I see you.
00:00:03.000 I see you.
00:00:04.000 Okay, I admit the Sophie Cunningham pointing meme has caught my attention.
00:00:08.000 I suppose I can begrudgingly discuss the WNBA for a moment.
00:00:11.000 Apparently, Sophie Cunningham is now being called MAGA Barbie for saying that men should not play against women in sports, and because she says Title IX is good.
00:00:19.000 Cue every sports writer losing their mind, and Megan Rapino doubling down on men playing in women's sports.
00:00:23.000 So Sophie Cunningham is the second biggest star on the Indiana Fever.
00:00:28.000 So Caitlin Clark is the biggest star on the Indiana Fever. 0.79
00:00:30.000 Okay, WNBA. 0.99
00:00:32.000 Time for some hot WNBA talk.
00:00:33.000 So, as y'all know, I am generally not a WNBA fan.
00:00:38.000 Caitlin Clark is fun to watch.
00:00:41.000 There are some other players who are, you know, fun to watch, I suppose.
00:00:44.000 I mean, I'd much rather watch college men's basketball, maybe high school men's basketball, certainly NBA.
00:00:49.000 In any case, without ripping into the WNBA, Sophie Cunningham has carved out a role for herself as Caitlin Clark's protector. 0.89
00:00:55.000 So she is a good player, but she's not scoring 20 points a game. 0.92
00:00:59.000 But her big thing is on the court. 1.00
00:01:00.000 She's not going to let Caitlin Clark get beat up because Caitlin Clark keeps getting manhandled, no pun intended, by a bunch of women. 1.00
00:01:07.000 And the speculation is that it has to do with the fact that she's been given star treatment and she's white.
00:01:12.000 And it's not all that speculative because some people have basically said that.
00:01:14.000 Well, Sophie Cunningham has also now spoken out on some other issues, including the idea of men and women's sports.
00:01:22.000 So there was an article recently with ESPN, the magazine, where the writer says this You say she's a MAGA Barbie, as some corners of the internet have taken to calling her projection, she says, because of what she looks like and where she's from.
00:01:34.000 She'll weigh in on how to protect women's sports, she says, because she's in that world and feels qualified to speak to that world.
00:01:40.000 She said, I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans.
00:01:42.000 And I'm like, I never once said that.
00:01:43.000 I think I'm here to extend love, but I also think with that love is truth, being honest.
00:01:47.000 And I want to protect young girls in a locker room or young girls in sport who shouldn't have to go up against biological men.
00:01:53.000 She also insists none of this is some Rosetta Stone to unlocking the true nature of her political worldview.
00:01:58.000 She said, I'm very much in the middle.
00:01:59.000 I agree with things on both sides, disagree with things on both sides.
00:02:02.000 That's all I've ever said about my political beliefs, but some people love to assume.
00:02:06.000 Again, this seems perfectly reasonable to me, like totally imperfectly reasonable.
00:02:10.000 Well, This came to a head yesterday because a reporter, a left wing reporter, asked her about those remarks, about saying that men should not play in women's sports.
00:02:18.000 And Sophie Cunningham, to her great credit, said, Listen, I'm not going to play this game with you.
00:02:23.000 I said what I said.
00:02:24.000 Deal with it.
00:02:26.000 I said what I said.
00:02:27.000 I think it's kind of common sense.
00:02:30.000 And I think I'll always believe in that.
00:02:32.000 I think it's really important to protect children.
00:02:34.000 And that's little girls who are also involved in that category.
00:02:38.000 And so I stand on what I said.
00:02:41.000 And I always believe that.
00:02:43.000 Do you see your advocacy on that taking any form going forward?
00:02:47.000 I don't know.
00:02:48.000 I'm not a very political person, but I do have beliefs, I have morals, and I'll always stand on those and be true to who I am.
00:02:56.000 I think people are going to take it how they want to take it, but I've never even really said anything about that.
00:03:01.000 When it comes to protecting young girls in sport and women in sport, I feel very strongly about that.
00:03:07.000 I think that's why you have Title IX.
00:03:09.000 That's why you have some of the greats in women's sports. 0.98
00:03:12.000 If Title IX and women's sports weren't protected, then you wouldn't hear about any type of women in sport.
00:03:17.000 I think in the future, it's just really important to protect.
00:03:22.000 I see you, Sophie Cunningham.
00:03:23.000 I see you.
00:03:25.000 I see you.
00:03:36.000 Loving it.
00:03:36.000 Loving it.
00:03:37.000 Okay.
00:03:37.000 So, I mean, the difference between Sophie Cunningham and Megan Rapinoe could not be more strong.
00:03:42.000 Megan Rapinoe would not be a famous person if men could play in women's sports.
00:03:45.000 The women's soccer team was losing to 15 year old boys. 0.85
00:03:48.000 But again, here's Megan Rapinoe saying all of the things that are necessary to keep her in the good graces of the left wing. 0.98
00:03:55.000 Really, what we're attacking women, we're saying, if you look like this as a woman, you can play. 1.00
00:04:00.000 If you look like this as a woman, there's a bill in Washington happening right now that's going to require all girls, just like full stop, to go through. 1.00
00:04:09.000 A sex test, an invasive, like examining their genitals to see if they're a woman. 0.97
00:04:14.000 And that has not worked out well historically for people to do that. 0.86
00:04:14.000 Yeah. 0.86
00:04:17.000 We know what that means. 1.00
00:04:18.000 Black girls are going to get questioned more and they're going to get questioned first. 1.00
00:04:22.000 Who's doing the examination? 1.00
00:04:23.000 Who wants to subject themselves to that?
00:04:24.000 Yeah.
00:04:25.000 And so they're going to see a pullback. 1.00
00:04:26.000 They don't like women in sports because it helps us with confidence and power.
00:04:30.000 And we see so many women in the C-suite played elite-level sports. 1.00
00:04:33.000 It's just great for you physically and all of it, but it's an attack on women in society. 1.00
00:04:39.000 And I think the.
00:04:40.000 The tie between the Heritage Foundation now wanting to go after Title IX.
00:04:43.000 It's just like so blatant.
00:04:45.000 Like, let's connect these dots.
00:04:46.000 It's more than just a couple of trans kids in the entire country and a couple in each state being able to participate in some youth sports. 1.00
00:04:57.000 Man, she is insufferable. 1.00
00:04:58.000 Absolutely insufferable, Megan Rapino. 1.00
00:05:01.000 Truly ridiculous. 0.97
00:05:03.000 And by the way, the sort of bizarre politics of the WNBA continues. 0.67
00:05:08.000 There's a piece in USA Today.
00:05:10.000 by a crazy columnist who says that Caitlin Clark is a flopper.
00:05:13.000 Now, let's be clear about one thing that's happened in basketball, and it's just, it's happened in men's basketball, women's basketball, like all basketball.
00:05:20.000 To draw fouls, people flop.
00:05:22.000 It is deeply annoying.
00:05:24.000 My son and I are NBA fans, and we were watching the playoffs last year and watching the sort of controversy over SGA flopping all the time was deeply irritating, obviously.
00:05:35.000 Well, now, apparently, flopping is a white supremacist thing, according to a columnist.
00:05:40.000 For USA Today, it seems there is a white nationalist element to Clark's fandom that is deeply, deeply problematic. 0.86
00:05:46.000 Made even more so because the WNBA is made up predominantly of black women, many of them queer.
00:05:51.000 When Clark claims fouls that don't exist, she goes on profanity laced tirades at referees. 1.00
00:05:55.000 Those races see her as a white woman in need of saving, take matters into their own hands. 1.00
00:06:00.000 So, first of all, she's complaining to the refs like every other player. 0.99
00:06:03.000 But apparently, when she does it, that means the KKK rides at dawn or something. 0.92
00:06:07.000 It shouldn't need reminding this country has an awful history of black people being harmed, even killed, in the name of defending white women.
00:06:15.000 While it's incumbent on the WNBA to do more to protect its players, there also should be an expectation on Clark to recognize the wider consequences of her action.
00:06:22.000 So, when Clark is getting bullied on the court, which she routinely is, or even when she flops, the idea is if she flops, then you know what that is.
00:06:31.000 That's like when Robin DiAngelo talks about white women's tears. 0.91
00:06:34.000 You can't have white women crying because that's dangerous for black people.
00:06:37.000 Like, this is really where we're going. 0.89
00:06:40.000 It's very funny.
00:06:40.000 A long time ago, somebody who is WNBA associated, I met this person, and they asked me because I made fun of the WNBA a lot, and they said, What would you do to make the WNBA more popular?
00:06:50.000 And I said, pretty easy, actually.
00:06:52.000 What I would do is I would have a team that was located in an area that was predominantly non NBA or basketball heavy, just generally basketball heavy, that had lots of tie ins to local universities where women's basketball is very popular, like Connecticut or Indiana.
00:07:09.000 And then I would get a bunch of women who are not radical left wingers to play for the team, who are kind of just generalized patriotic.
00:07:20.000 I would say it would be good if some of them were straight, so they were not all lesbians. 1.00
00:07:23.000 That would be probably a marketing plus. 1.00
00:07:27.000 And then I would just play that team.
00:07:28.000 And I'll bet you that people would probably respond to a baseline level of patriotism and rationality because the politics of the WNBA have been labeled left for so long, it's very difficult for people to find buy in.
00:07:40.000 Like, would I take my daughter to a WNBA game given the politics of the league?
00:07:45.000 It would be very difficult. 1.00
00:07:47.000 So make it easier.
00:07:49.000 And the Indiana Fever just kind of did it.
00:07:51.000 And now people are watching.
00:07:52.000 And now people are screaming at the Indiana Fever for doing it, which is kind of one of the reasons why you are where you are with the WNBA.
00:07:58.000 What an amazing video you just watched!
00:08:00.000 Wasn't that amazing?
00:08:01.000 Well, you know, if you think so, head on over to dailywire.comslash subscribe to watch the full show ad free or check out this crazy story here.