JD Vance encouraged Sophie Cunningham to keep being “courageous,” after the WNBA player spoke out against transgender athletes in women’s sports.
Cunningham, 29, told ESPN in an interview published last month that she wanted to “protect young girls in a locker room” and prevent female athletes from having to compete against “biological men.” Since then, the Indiana Fever guard has been criticized by others in the league, but praised by conservative pundits and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
“Look, sometimes when you’re courageous in this country, some of the worst people in the world will try to attack you,” Vance, 41, told Fox News host Laura Ingraham. “What I would tell Sophie and anybody is to keep speaking your mind. You actually are inspiring a dozen people for every person that criticizes you.”
“We cannot take our country back—we cannot save the United States of America—unless you have people of courage who are speaking their mind,” he continued. “The thing about courage is it’s contagious. When you see one person—even if they have the mob come after them—one person speak their mind in a courageous and honest way, it inspires a lot of people to do the same. So I would tell Sophie to keep going.”
Cunningham earned the nickname “MAGA Barbie” in college due to her social media activity, according to Complex, but she insists she is “very much in the middle” politically.
To ESPN, Cunningham said, “I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that.’”
“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 told the outlet.
Cunningham doesn’t “dislike anyone,” she said, adding, “I’m also there to love biological women, and I think that there are rights that need to be protected.”
Now, Cunningham seems to have had enough of the controversy.
“For me, I want to get back to basketball. It’s always been about basketball,” she told reporters during a shootaround this week. “That [ESPN] interview happened in February when I was asked a question, so for me, you know, I just want to make sure the focus stays where it should be, because people are playing at such a high level.”
