MAGA is in full-on meltdown mode after crowds at a WNBA game booed a player who’s become a darling of the right for her comments about trans athletes.
Sophie Cunningham, the 29-year-old Indiana Fever guard branded “MAGA Barbie” for saying she wants to “protect young girls in a locker room” and stop “biological men” from playing against women, faced off with the Minnesota Lynx on Sunday.
Fans jeered at Cunningham almost every time she touched the ball during the game, which ended in her team’s 108-100 loss to the Lynx. The political firestorm sparked by her comments was never far from the match. Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve, 59, wore a T-shirt that read “Trans Kids Belong,” while protesters picketed the entrance to the stadium.
Fox News hardliner Laura Ingraham led the charge online in the aftermath of the game. “Should Cunningham and Clark even continue to play?” she posted on X, in reference to both the guard and her teammate Caitlin Clark. “I honestly worry for their safety during the games, and entering and exiting the stadiums. These pro-trans people are obsessed militants capable of anything.”
There are no reports of any threat of violence at Sunday’s match. It is also unclear why Ingraham thought Clark might have been a target of the audience’s booing, given she’s conspicuously avoided taking a side in the furor.
Far-right pundit Matt Walsh was also quick to hop on the bandwagon. “It’s funny to watch these leftists cling to the trans bulls–-t,” he wrote. “The pro-trans side has been thoroughly defeated at every level—politically, culturally, in the courts, in the legislatures, everywhere—and yet they can’t let it go.”
“What a total mess the WNBA is,” fellow right-winger Collin Rugg chimed in. “They spent years demanding they get respect and now that they have more attention, you have head coaches advocating for men in their sport.”
Pro-Trump influencer Gina Milan went after Reeve directly for the shirt she and other protesters wore at Sunday’s match. “Cheryl Reeve said she wore her ‘Trans kids belong’ shirt to ‘educate’,” Milan wrote. “Educate us on what? That boys belong in girls’ sports? What a freaking weirdo.”
Riley Gaines, a former swimmer for the University of Kentucky who became a MAGA darling since tying for fifth place against a trans swimmer in the 2022 NCAA championships, showed support to Cunningham at the game.
Gaines claims a staff member at the arena asked her not to display a sign reading: “Sophie, thank you — a girl mom,” at the game, before later apologizing.
Cunningham found Gaines by the tunnel once the game was over and stayed with her for about 15 minutes, Fox reported. Gaines later shared a photo of the pair of them together, with Cunningham holding up the sign the staffer had allegedly wanted gone.
Gaines was accompanied courtside by fellow anti-trans activist Jennifer Sey, former president of Levi Strauss & Co. Sey quit in 2022, saying the company had squeezed her out over her campaigning against COVID-era school closures.
Sey has since launched clothing brand XX-XY Athletics, which organized a gathering outside the arena on Sunday. Supporters in the brand’s tops held placards reading “Pro-Women, Not Anti-Trans” and “Trust the Science.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt came to the Fever guard’s defense during a press briefing last month, describing the backlash against her comments as “astonishing.”
The Daily Beast has contacted Indiana Fever and the Minnesota Lynx for comment on this story.
