Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy thinks Megyn Kelly is an “absolute moron” to call Caitlin Clark a coward for dodging a question about Sophie Cunningham’s anti-trans athlete comments.
On Sunday (Aug. 2), Clark was asked about her Indiana Fever teammate’s comments about trans athletes, and she refused to take sides and said it was ultimately up to the leagues and governing bodies to decide. Megyn Kelly, 55, reacted to the viral clip by reposting it on X, formerly Twitter, and calling the 24-year-old WNBA star a “coward.”
“Absolute moron/idiot to call Caitlin a coward for this answer,” Portnoy wrote in a reply. “1st of all you don’t even know how she feels on this issue and more importantly she doesn’t owe it you or anybody else to be your political talking point. She just wants to play ball. Total coward cheap shot.”
Kelly later fired back, and misleadingly referenced a 2025 study from the Williams Institute, a research institute based at the UCLA School of Law.
“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. “(Hint: UCLA Law estimates over 120k trans athletes at the HS level.) Understand this however: if it were your daughter suffering brain damage from a boy posing as a girl, you wouldn’t care how many others there were. One is too many. But watch my show today bc I actually answered your Q civilly and respectfully, unlike your behavior here.”
The figure that Kelly is referencing here comes from a study on transgender sports participation bans, authored by Elana Redfield, that estimated that there’s roughly 1.6 million transgender people in the United States aged 13 and older. Of that figure, they estimated that there are 300,100 transgender youth, most of whom would be enrolled in schools. Using data from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, the study deduced that 40.7 percent of transgender youth between grades 9 and 12 played on at least one sports team.
Using the estimate of the population, they speculated that “as many as 122,000 transgender youth could be participating in high school-level team athletics.” The National Federation of State High School Associations reported, via a participation survey (which can be unreliable for solid figures), that a total of 8,266,244 students participated in high school sports in 2024-25, which means the study’s estimate suggests that roughly 1.4 percent of American high school students participating in sports are trans.
The anti-trans athletes order, signed by President Trump on February 5, 2025, prohibits transgender women and girls from participating in organized sports. The order does not mention trans boys and men. The study also does not highlight whether trans youth are playing on teams corresponding to their gender assigned at birth or their current gender identity.
This has all kicked off, again, after Cunningham said that she believes it’s “common sense” to prohibit trans women from competing in sports against cis women. Not a single trans woman has ever played in the WNBA, and there’s only been one openly transgender woman, weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, in the entire history of the Olympic Games.
