Riley Gaines: Tie for 5th, Grift for Life

We get out of the water.

We go.

Yeah, you can see here.

We both went 143.40.

And so we tied and we go behind the awards podium where the NCAA official looks at Thomas and myself and says, Great job.

But you guys tied.

And we only have one trophy.

So we're going to give this trophy to Leah.

So we're going to give this trophy to Leah.

So we're going to give the trophy to Leah.

We're giving this trophy to Leah.

If you come in first, you'll get a gold medal.

But if you come in fifth, actually, not even come in fifth, but if you tie for fifth, you can be on Fox News for the rest of your life.

Hi, I'm Matt Bernstein, and welcome back to A Bit Fruity.

It's really too bad I'm not better at swarming.

Riley Gaines is someone who you might not be familiar with by name, but you are more than probably familiar with her face, with her appearances on Fox News, with her appearances on every conservative talk show.

I do always wonder like how many people actually have any idea who she is, like outside of this little, you know what I mean?

I don't know.

I've told a couple people that I'm doing this episode and they were like, who?

And then I show them a video and they're like, oh,

really anytime I see content.

where she's featured, it's just 10,000 comments being like, finally, a champion for women.

Yeah, I mean, if you get like really deep in her replies, she also has a dedicated group of like transvestigators, which is another like very funny and completely inevitable thing.

And even if you aren't familiar with her name or her face, you've almost definitely felt the effects of Riley Gaines' right-wing rhetoric, the effects of the laws that have been passed that she's lobbied for, the effect she's had on Donald Trump's administration, all of which we're going to get to.

But one of the things that I really set out to to do with this podcast, and that's partially because I personally take great interest in doing this, is learning more about the people who are shaping our political and cultural landscape today.

Whether that be Fox News talking heads like Riley Gaines, influencers like Kaya Rachik of Libs of TikTok and Ollie London, these people who accrue so much social and political capital, not to mention financial capital.

Like all these people, they're just ranting about trans people for clicks.

It's actually really remarkable.

Like I grew up like hardly hearing about trans people.

And I just think like all of these people on the right who are talking about us constantly are ensuring that like there's no kid who's like making it to adulthood without knowing that some people are trans.

The grift du jour, the grift really of the year, the grift perhaps of the 2020s so far is just the anti-trans stuff.

It's a very convenient entry point into like a fruitful career in conservative news.

Like everyone's Jerry Springer now.

Everyone is Jerry Springer now.

But like worse.

Right.

I mean, Jerry Springer wasn't pretending to be like protecting a group of people.

Riley Gaines is like pretending to be a feminist.

Everyone just wants to see somebody throw a chair.

Throw a chair?

That's a Cherry Springer thing.

I'm too young for this.

I know.

I have never felt more ancient than this moment.

Actually, I can see the gray hairs popping up.

To help us learn more about Riley Gaines, the woman who tied for fifth place in a college swim meet and has made an extraordinarily lucrative career out of it, we are joined today by none other than Ari Drennan, who is the LGBTQ program director at Media Matters for America.

Media Matters is basically like a watchdog for conservative bias in media.

As Ari would describe it, we watch right-wing propaganda all day and tell you about it so you don't have to.

Before we start, if you would like to support this show, if you would like more of the show, you can get that over on Patreon.

I've forgotten to plug my Patreon for the last several episodes.

I'm doing a great job of this whole self-promotion thing, but I have a number of bonus episodes coming out.

The one that I'm working on right now is actually about what conversion therapy looks like right now and using the lore of YouTube star Lo Hanthany, who was, you know, reborn Christian and no longer gay.

You know, it's a lot of stuff, but researching it and filming that shortly, and that'll be up there in a few days.

Yeah, you can support the show on Patreon.

The link for that will be in the episode description.

Conversion therapy stories are always just so hard to watch because all I can think of when I, when I see these people is just how broken the people in this marriage are going to end up being in 30 years when it turns out that they still don't connect.

And then also just how that gets put onto the children.

It's really bad to have somebody who's like in your close family who's living in the closet and it it impacts everyone around you.

Like, I don't know.

I know this is a tangent, but I just, I wish that people would be more honest about that because it feels like a lot of times there's this kind of like, you know, the choice is to come out and ruin your family or to like stay in the closet and everyone will be happy.

But like, that's not what people in the closet are like.

You know what I mean?

It's just something I have like way too much personal experience with.

Should we jump into Riley Gaines' early life?

Right now, I'm just thinking of like, what's the hook?

I feel like the hook is that she wanted to be a dentist, and then she happened to touch the wall in a swim meet at the same time as a trans woman, and now she's a media star.

Maybe if she had only swam a little better that day, she could be a dentist and we wouldn't even be talking about this.

I mean, what's wild about that is she actually had a bunch of times that were faster than Leah's times.

So it was like kind of a combination of her having an off day and Leah having a really good day.

History could have been so different.

Riley Gaines could be a dentist.

I yearn for a world in which Riley Gaines is a dentist and I don't have to talk about her.

But we don't live in that world.

And so we're, that's the hook.

That's the hook.

Riley Gaines, my dear listener, Riley Gaines was born on April 21st, 2000.

I'm sorry.

I just have to stop it there.

She's, she is 24.

She's so young.

My little sister was born in 2000.

You know, she's 10 years younger than me.

I just think about like how she's going to feel about all this in 10 years.

It feels really likely likely to me that she's set up for some kind of political career, but I just like, I can't imagine defining your life around a college sporting event and, you know, the role that this like relatively minor slight has taken on in her own mythology.

I just, I have no doubt that she feels she's doing the right thing now, but she's got a lot of time ahead of her.

Riley Gaines was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee.

Both of her parents were college athletes.

Her dad was a football player.

And as she tells it, she began swimming as a four-year-old.

Riley was a high school swimming champion in the 100-yard butterfly and freestyle races.

And then she went on to swim for the University of Kentucky.

Riley competed in the D1 NCAA Women's Swimming and Diving Championships as a junior.

She came in second in one of her races and seventh in another.

I, you know, there's a lot of dunking on Riley Gaines that happens for good reason.

And there's certainly a fair amount of dunking we're going to do in this episode, but like,

she is a very talented swimmer.

You know, I don't know how much she swims now, but she was a very talented swimmer.

People will like try to knock her and be like, oh, well, you're just a mediocre swimmer.

Like, did she get to the Olympics?

No.

But almost.

So she's a junior at University of Kentucky.

She swims in the NCAA championships.

She does.

well.

She doesn't win any of the races, but she does really well.

And then she comes back for that same meet as a senior.

And it is at this meet that the pivotal moment of Riley Gaines' life thus far, or at least in the way that she kind of mythologizes her life, this is where that happens.

Tell me what you think about this, but based on my time sort of like serving a lot of people in right-wing media and like these conservative influencers and these Fox News people, especially like the relatively single-issue ones, like Riley Gaines has made hating trans people her single issue, they take what you described earlier as a personal slight and they use them to like draw greater conclusions about like the injustices of like woke ideology or something.

And they, I'm like beating myself to the punchline of Riley Gain's career, but they kind of just like use these things that happened to them and recite them again and again and again and again and again and again and again on every conservative podcast, like on every, like a trans person did this to me one time or like, you know, look how woke ideology.

And they just like talk about it forever.

It's really interesting actually, because I feel like they have this idea of the left as being obsessed with trauma.

But there's this, especially in the anti-trans grifter space, this real lack of interest in personal accountability that I find very odd.

You know, like Ollie London can't just say, like, oh, yeah, I screwed up and got too much plastic surgery, right?

It's like somehow trans ideology is to blame for it.

And, you know, same with Riley Gaines.

Like, she can't just say, like, oh, I had an off day or, you know, like, Leah had a really good day.

It's like this great systemic injustice.

I think it kind of flows downhill of Trumpism, right?

Where it's like Donald Trump has never done something wrong that he's aware of.

Like it's always like the system was rigged against him.

It just like, it really reminds me of, you know, when I was a little kid in Little League, I was really bad at Little League.

Really, really bad.

Like I was so terrified of the ball, but my, my mother insisted on me playing.

And, you know, like when I wouldn't get put in, it was never like, well, yeah, you're not really good.

It was like, oh, the coach is like biased against you or the coach is like biased against his own kid.

And everything's a conspiracy to like leave you out, which to me is just like a really uncomfortable way to see the world.

Yeah, it's interesting because like those systemic biases do exist, but like not towards people on the basis that they're cisgender.

Right.

And I just like, I don't know, I, I've been out as a trans woman for like a while now.

And it is really easy to get in your head and be like, oh, this person did this because I'm trans or whatever.

And I don't want to deny that that happens, but it's also like not a very helpful way to see the world.

You know, like, I just really strongly believe that like the only thing you have control over is how you react to what happens in your life.

And, you know, if you're just like waiting for people to like do the wrong thing all the time, like that's what you're going to see in the world, not to get like super existential or whatever.

So, what happened at this swim meet?

So, Riley Gaines, she's in for the 200-yard freestyle race.

You all know this story.

Why do I assume people know this?

Just because this is like common knowledge to you and me, because we're always like swimming in the news of Riley Gaines, like, this is not something.

I'm like, Yeah, of course, my mom knows that Leah Thomas and Riley Gaines tied for fifth in the 200-yard freestyle at the 2022 NCAA.

Like, what?

This is not something people think about.

Yeah, I always wonder, because like Fox News's coverage of Leah Thomas, they would always just use this one swim meet where she was like super far ahead of everybody and there was like a time delay before anyone else even like comes into the frame.

That's not what happened with her and Riley Gaines, right?

Like they both lost to four other women.

And so I would be curious, like how many people actually know that Riley Gaines wasn't, you know, the second place person or that Leah Thomas didn't win that race or just like what actually happened there, which is they both touched the wall at the same time.

Right.

So Leah Thomas is a transgender swimmer.

That is something that probably you do know because her name has been just absolutely blown up as she's been called the face of like the transgender athlete issue, essentially.

And what happened in that race was, like you said, Ari, Riley and Leah tie for fifth place.

Not a meddling position, might I add.

No shade.

I would not have been in fifth place, but, you know, and they both lose to four other cisgender swimmers.

You know, just to clarify, Leah did not beat Riley Gaines.

Both of them lost to four other women.

That's, that was what happened.

That was the catalyst for Riley Gaines' entire career now.

And I think it's important that none of the four other women that they lost to have ever like said a negative word about it.

Like though, I looked it up in the first place finisher, Taylor Brock, who later went on to represent Canada Canada in the Olympics, actually.

So this wasn't like the end of her swim career, said competition is competition.

And she was excited to race against someone who swam so fast.

So, you know, it's not like there was this universal uproar.

Like, obviously, there were people stoked by the media to be very upset about Leah Thomas, but Riley is the only person who's ever spoken up publicly about this race.

I want to send you a picture, which you've most definitely seen from the aftermath of this race, where Leah and Riley are standing next to one another, both posing for the camera, both smiling.

So, I'm gonna, I'm gonna send you this.

The reason that I wanted to bring this up is because I was making my notes for this episode, and I was looking at this photo, which is a photo that I've seen, which is a photo that's been, you know, aired on Fox News a million times to show how like horrifying or, you know, whatever this college swim race was.

And

just, this is the most emo I'm gonna get about this, okay?

But I see two people who are both seemingly happy, who are standing a couple feet away from each other, who just both swam like there's no makeup, you know.

I just see two people who like in another world where there were not so many incentives and motives to divide and hate one another that like could have, I don't know, like been friends and like learned from each other and two people who like arrived at womanhood in different ways and and two people who are both excellent swimmers and two people who in some ways have so much in common.

And I don't know.

This is like my, you know, in Mean Girls where the woman who doesn't go to the school is like, I just wish we could bake a cake and love each other.

Like, that's how I feel looking at this photo.

And it's, it's sad to me that that is obviously not what happened.

Yeah, I think a lot about how the modern social media environment around trans women in sports just creates this really nasty incentive to be shit talking people on the internet.

I feel like in a kinder world, there are adults around who would, who instead of encouraging Riley Gaines to make a career of this, would have said, wow, like it's unfortunate that you lost that race or that it's it's unfortunate that you tied that race, right?

Like it's hard when we lose things or it's hard when we don't win in a competition, but there's a lesson in there, right?

And I feel like that's what the whole culture warframe takes away from us is that people are always thinking about like, oh, like I have an incentive to, you know, really play up this grievance.

And I just think it makes society worse for everybody.

Yeah.

And I don't know.

Someone could say that, oh, well, I'm doing the same thing.

And Riley gains direction because I don't like her.

And true, I don't like her.

Even in my dislike for her and my personal feelings that what she's doing as a career is like pretty evil.

I also think that like she's a human being.

I actually know that for a fact.

She's 24 years old.

She's capitulated to like numerous capitalist incentives to like prioritize hate over everything else.

And I think those are just choices that we all have the capacity not to make.

I think Riley Gain's evolution and the way that she talks about trans women is really instructive.

Right after the race with Leah Thomas, she was being quoted in the press saying, like, I wish Leah well in her transition, really focusing on what she said at the time was the issue of fairness in sports.

And it's just drifted so far away from that.

Like a year later, she's talking about Leah's genitals on Joe Rogan, which, by the way, never mentioned at the time of the loss.

And then a year after that, she's posting pictures of,

can you hear my dog?

Yeah.

He's very protective.

So if you're watching this podcast and you're like, I'm going to go to Ari's house, just know that my dog will lose his shit.

And then a year after that, she's posting pictures of random like trans women in middle school and high school and making fun of their appearance, singling them out for mob harassment.

And I always think the topic of audience capture on social media is really, really fascinating.

I think there's a really good chance that, you know, two, three years ago, Riley Gaines would be horrified by who Riley Gaines has become.

But as you said, she's responding to some capitalist incentives that have, you know, set her up comfortably financially, probably for the rest of her life.

So depressing.

It's so depressing.

So back to the day of the race, Riley would later tell it that, you know, it was this, it was this great injustice of our time that she and Leah tied for fifth.

But not only that, do you know the story of the trophy?

I do know the story of the trophy.

They only had one fifth place trophy at the swim meet.

And so they gave it to Leah, which I'm sure is something that, you know, if you asked her, she would happily have given it over.

And then Riley's trophy arrived in the mail.

That's the whole story.

And we raced and ultimately we tied.

We went the exact same time down to the hundredth of a second and so we go behind the awards podium and the Enstobile official looks at both Thomas and myself and he says great job you guys tied.

We don't really account for ties so we're going to give this trophy to Leah.

What happened on March 17th, 2022?

Thomas and I raced in the 200 freestyle and again resulted in a tie.

We went behind the awards podium where typically you're handed your trophy, you're marched out, you're named an all-American.

And so we go back there, and the official looks at both Thomas and myself and says, Great job, but you guys tied.

And we only have one trophy, therefore, we're giving this trophy to Leah.

We go back there, and the official looks at me and Leah.

We're about this far apart, and he says, Great job, you guys tied.

Leah gets the trophy.

But it was the principle of him outright looking at me as if it didn't matter and telling me that Leah got the trophy.

We get out of the water, we go.

Yeah, you can see here, we both went 143.40.

Not one of us going 143.39 or 143.41 tying.

Get out of the water, go behind the awards podium.

The NCAA official looks at both Thomas and myself.

Thomas, who is towering over me, right, six foot four.

And this official looks at both of us and says, great job, you two.

But you tied.

And we only have one trophy, so we're going to give the trophy to...

Leah.

And so we go back there, and the official looks at both Thomas and myself.

Thomas, who's six foot four, by the way.

Wikipedia will tell you six foot one, and Wikipedia is lying.

This official looks at both Thomas and myself and says, great job,

but you guys tied.

And we only have one trophy.

And so we tied and we go behind the awards podium where the NCAA official looks at Thomas and myself, Thomas, who's towering over me at 6'4 ⁇ , me being 5'6 ⁇ .

And the official says, great job, but you guys tied.

And we only have one trophy.

Uh, so we're gonna give this trophy to Leah.

Ultimately, it's a fight over participation trophies and who got one first.

Yeah, reading this, I didn't even realize that there was a fifth-place trophy in swimming.

I like, I don't know, good for both of them, I guess.

This is what the boomers are mad about.

We're gonna talk a lot about Riley Gaines, the career that she made out of all of this, but like, she will go on to talk about this trophy incident of like, they gave it to Leah, but they mailed mine to me as like,

first of all, like the worst thing that can happen to a person.

And, like, also much worse than anything that could ever happen to a trans person as a result of Riley Gaines' rhetoric.

Right.

I mean, it sucks, right?

Like, I, I wish they hadn't done that.

I can understand being a little annoyed by that in the moment.

But again, I think that's somewhere where, like, ideally, you have some adults around who are like, wow, yeah, that sucks.

Like, sometimes bad decisions are made.

Let's move on to dental school.

yeah

which which she had already put in a deposit for at this point oh my god really i i actually didn't know that yes according to her she she at this point had like been accepted to dental school her plan was to become a dentist and she had like secured her spot in a dental school before withdrawing it but let me not get ahead of myself i literally wrote down in the little like trophy story section of my outline i wrote i guess that sucks Like, yeah, I mean, it does suck to like come in the same place as someone and then have them walk away with the trophy while yours is in the mail.

I just, I guess in the grand scheme of things, this is hard to care about.

I think, like, on an optics level, like, if you're trying to make a statement about trans people being equal in places like this, like, ideally, you give the same trophy to everybody or not.

You know, again, I think this is something that like...

I'm sure everybody involved regrets deeply if they had known what they were creating.

Certainly.

Yeah, this is kind of like the Riley Gains Frankenstein moment.

She uses the story of having her trophy be sent in the mail as opposed to given to her that day.

For the rest of her career, she uses the story as like evidence of like anti-cisgender bias in society and like a world that like is just constantly rewarding trans people.

And I just am unfamiliar with that world if it does exist, but you're the trans person on this podcast right now.

You tell me.

I always hear from people on Twitter who are like, oh, you became a trans woman because you were fucking up your career.

And like, that would be a very convenient story, but I was like working on a presidential campaign.

I was like in my pipeline to working in the White House job, which after I transitioned, I decided I did not have any interest in.

Everything was going right for me.

And I was still miserable, like despite all that, which is why I ended up deciding to transition.

And maybe you think that a nonprofit media job is like the best reward that that somebody can get in our society?

And, you know, I have little complaint about my job and I am very fortunate to have the platform that I do.

But when I look around at the like rewards that trans people are supposedly getting, it's like, you know, a magazine cover occasionally or some more followers on Twitter.

But like of the of the trans writers and activists that I talk to a lot, like, you know, nobody has like a staff media job, like nobody's regularly on air at a cable news network, nobody's having an endowed position created for them, like Riley Gaines.

Like, nobody's appearing in presidential campaign ads.

And, you know, I don't want to appear in presidential campaign ads under any circumstances, but it's, I think, inarguable that if you're becoming involved in the conversation around trans people, the rewards are much, much greater on the anti-trans side, Especially, I mean, honestly, like if you're queer.

Oh, yeah.

Clock that Caitlin Jenner T.

I don't know how much she's even getting out of this at this point.

Like, she

Fox News has put her on one time in the last six months.

I never thought that the words clock that Caitlin Jenner T would come out of my mouth, but here we are.

Oh, God.

If you don't mind, I want to take a quick break from the show to thank the sponsor of today's episode, Rocket Money.

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And now,

let's get back to it.

So a career in anti-trans activism for Riley Gaines begins.

I started at this section of my outline with just this screenshot of a headline that, so, Riley Gaines was meant to speak at a university, and she was protested by a lot of the students.

And in a headline about this, Riley Gaines was called an anti-Leah Thomas activist, which I just think that's so accurate, though.

It's that's exactly what I thought.

It's so funny.

Like, how can you be an activist against a private individual who's like not even aspiring to do anything except like swim the one time and it's already happened?

But also, that is what Riley Gaines is.

She's an anti-Leah Thomas activist.

I know.

I feel like Leah Thomas like set foot outside her house like once in the last three years and Fox News immediately like got a photo.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And we're going to talk more about that too.

So Riley Gaines graduates from the University of Kentucky in 2022, shortly after the race.

As I mentioned, she had a scholarship and a deposit down for dental school already, but pulls out because as she tells it, she felt the need to fight for women's sports.

Now, I'm not so sure that a deeply held desire to fight for the fairness of women's sports is the reason that she pulled out of dental school.

I think she already had multiple publishing deals, but, you know, I'll let you decide for yourself.

She starts speaking out right away before graduation from undergrad, weeks after this race where she ties with leah she goes on marsha blackburn's podcast i got out of the water we kind of like go behind the podium um the awards ceremony place um and they'll distribute the trophies and so i walked back there and the ncaa official came up to me and he just said hey that was a great swim um we only have one fifth place trophy which um which i understood i i get how that works they only account you know for one fifth place winner so i get that but he said um

we're going to have to give the trophy to Leah.

Yours will be coming in the mail.

I didn't even know a senator could have a podcast.

Oh, you're telling me you're not a regular listener of Verdict with Ted Cruz?

All right, despite what I put out on the internet, I do love myself a little bit.

He's, it's, it's especially weird with him because he's always like going on Fox News and then plugging himself as a podcaster.

It's like, bro, you are a senator.

Like his wife works at Goldman Sachs.

Like I, he's literally just in it for the clout.

Earlier this year, I went lobbying on Capitol Hill and I met Lauren Underwood, who's a representative.

And I was talking to her, and she was like, you know, some people come here to serve the people and some people come here to get a...

show on Fox News after.

And I thought that was a really cunty thing for a sitting representative to say.

It's also just like so funny because it's like not even consistently a good way to get on Fox News after because most of these people are deeply mediocre and just like not good at media.

So the NCAA championships are in March of every year so that's when the race was.

April 1st she's on Marsha Blackburn's podcast.

April 6th she's on Fox News for the first time.

Me and Leah just recently tied at the NCAA championships

and honestly I think the NCAA handled everything extremely poorly starting from when we finished and I went behind the podium to collect my fifth place trophy and you know they kind of blatantly told me that Leah would hold the fifth place trophy and that I could pose with the sixth place trophy for photos and would be mailed a fifth place trophy in the mail.

It's a matter of weeks.

Like there's no time to metabolize what happened at all.

The right-wing media, I think, had really been looking for an incident like this.

And at the time that the Riley Gaines race happened, they'd been covering Leah Thomas really, really heavily.

So in just six weeks between the start of December and whatever comes six weeks after the start of December,

they aired 32 segments about Leah Thomas.

And they just kind of continued at that pace throughout the season.

So my guess would be that they were desperately reaching out to people who had competed against Leah, trying to get them on the air so that they could push this narrative, which had become a very politically important narrative in the early days of the Biden administration.

Finally, with Riley Gaines, they found somebody who was kind of sympathetic to their overall political project who was willing to be a participant in this.

When did the obsessive Leah Thomas coverage start?

Because I really know Riley's timeline, but I don't really remember Leah being like this anti-celebrity for them before she started popping off.

So right-wing media had been trying to make an issue out of trans athletes since just about 2019, just in time for the 2020 election.

Of course, it wasn't at all a problem for them before then.

Media Matters had been reporting on Facebook activity, which is where a lot of this stuff starts, as you can imagine.

And Facebook conversations were really being dominated by right-wing posts about trans athletes.

In 2019, there was a champion transgender cyclist who somehow has since been completely memory-holed, but was covered really heavily by Fox News at the time.

And we looked in between January 2019 and March of 2021, there were 72 discussions on Fox News that reference trans athletes.

So by the time the race with Leah Thomas and Riley Gaines happens, this is something that the Fox News audience had been really heavily prepped to see.

And then finally, they had their example, which doesn't even work as an example because neither of them were on the podium, but they have their visual where Leah Thomas and Riley Gaines are in the same photo.

Leah's four inches taller than Riley, not even because Leah's like an unusually tall, elite swimmer.

She's about the same height as Katie Ledecki and Missy Franklin, but they're very good at kind of taking that visual and using it for propaganda purposes.

And so they really, really heavily covered Leah Thomas from kind of like the very start of her career.

And something else, you know, when I was like prepping for this podcast that I found that I'd forgotten about was that at one point, Leah races this other trans swimmer, Isaac Hennig, who's a trans man, was competing on the Yale women's swimming and diving team.

And Fox News really hyped up this swim meet.

I should say that Isaac was able to compete on the women's team because he was not at the time taking testosterone.

And so they had this race and then Isaac beat Leah.

And it was very clear that right-wing media was disappointed by this outcome.

And then they started talking about how, like, obviously, the two of them had colluded to produce that outcome.

Oh, my God.

So, you know, they'd set this up as this big, like, celebration of biological determinism, and then it failed.

And then they went looking for another thing that they could cover.

Big trans is out to get you.

It's so true.

Big trans athletics colluding against Fox News.

All five of them, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Like, talk to me when it's like big trans music.

I don't know.

Right.

Right.

I guess just one more thing, which is that as early as 2020, Idaho was already moving ahead with legislation to try to ban trans athletes from competing.

So that even predated Leah Thomas.

And, you know, it feels like she stepped into this, probably having no idea what was going to happen.

To your knowledge, the laws that start popping up and then eventually getting getting passed are like seemingly a direct result of like the media frenzy around it.

I think it's fair to say there is not significant, and there still is not significant grassroots pressure contacting right-wing state legislators and demanding that they take action on this issue.

This is a very like donor-heavy issue that, you know, I think is primarily a distraction.

So Riley Gaines is starting to experience a little her first taste, baby's first taste of Fox News stardom.

By July, her podcast called Gaines for Girls launches in partnership with Outkick, which is a Fox-owned conservative sports news website.

By early August, she's on stage with Donald Trump speaking at CPAC.

Again, just a wild turnaround that in March, you're like some girl competing in college swimming.

And again, that's not to diminish the fact that she was a great swimmer.

She was a great swimmer, so great that she tied for fifth.

But

this is what happened.

But then by August, she's on stage with Donald Trump.

We have a great person here.

Where's our beautiful, great swimmer?

Gaines, where's Gaines?

Look at, come up here.

Will you please come up here?

I guess I'm just amazed, and I've spoken with this in other episodes about, you know, the thing that you just mentioned about these people like seek people who can speak truths to the narratives that they want to tell, right?

And Riley Gaines was a willing participant.

But just the speed with which she goes from a college senior at University of Kentucky to collaborator of Donald Trump is four months.

A few weeks later, she's speaking with Trump at his rally in Arizona, where she says, I'm voting for Donald J.

Trump because I am a woman.

This is kind of a rhetorical tool she uses a lot.

You know, I don't think it's a secret to the right that they have a problem with women.

And I think leaning into the idea that you could be like a right-wing Donald Trump supporting feminist, which you can't be, but they found this in Riley Gaines.

And I mean, what do you make of this?

Like,

I was watching a lot of videos of Riley Gaines in preparation for this.

And the comments in all of them are like, a champion for women, finally, someone who will stand up for women.

But then you ask, you know, any of these people if they support like, you know, abortion or like women's education initiatives or workplace initiatives.

And of course they don't.

Or even like if they've watched women's sports.

I mean, like one big thing that we've found in looking at the way that the right-wing media covers sports is that a lot of them will kind of say that this is a big issue for them.

And then given the chance to take it away from this issue, they'll kind of turn around and shit all over it.

So, you know, like most.

Most of these guys who are in the right-wing media always talking about women's sports have criticized the WNBA, have criticized the U.S.

women's national team, even calling for them to be disbanded.

I mean, Riley Gaines herself did a media appearance where she said that a really good high school men's basketball team could beat a WNBA team, which I struggle to imagine being possible.

I'm not going to pretend I know the answer to that.

I'm not the one.

I have no idea.

I'm not a basketball watcher.

I mean, at the end of the day, in 2020, the Republicans saw that the group that they lost the most ground with was suburban white women.

And Republican strategists have been very open in the media about the fact that they saw trans athletes in sports as a way to motivate suburban white women, which I always think is such a, it's a very strange take, right?

That those are the kind of people who would be more concerned about their kids'

softball game than whether or not they have bodily autonomy.

I don't think it'll it'll bear out and it hasn't borne out in the 2020 midterms, any of the special elections really since then.

But this really did become a right-wing media crusade out of a desire to counter the losses that they're having with women over abortion.

And it remains that way.

The next month in September 2022, Riley Gaines is starring in a campaign ad for U.S.

Senator Rand Paul.

I trained from an early age, giving it my all to achieve my dream.

And I accomplished it, becoming a 12-time All-American swimmer at the University of Kentucky.

But for girls across America, that dream is being taken away by men competing in women's sports.

Sadly, few stood up for me.

But Rand Paul is not afraid to fight for fairness for women and girls, and that's why I'm supporting him.

I'm Rand Paul, and I prove this message because I'll always fight for fairness.

By 2023, she starts testifying in front of congressional committees, lobbying to get trans people banned from sports and ban trans healthcare.

So already we're veering way off of the whole fairness and sports issue and trying to ban health care for trans kids.

She speaks in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee to lobby against new civil rights protections for LGBTQ people.

Once again, claiming to the United States government that being in the same room as Leah Thomas was dangerous for her.

I actually want to get your take on this because this is something she says a lot in her media appearances where she talks about being in the locker room where she can like kind of invoke like the body of a trans woman as something that would like emotionally affect people.

Yeah.

So we've looked really closely at the overall content of her media appearances and found that originally she was very focused on this issue of fairness.

But since then she's really drifted off that, arguing that trans people are dangerous physically to cis people in locker rooms, which is just not true.

Trans people are actually four four times more likely to be the victims of all the various kinds of assault than their cisgender counterparts, and are much, much more likely to be assaulted in a bathroom than to be the perpetrator of that assault.

But, you know, that's something she's focused on as she's moved on from the sports issue to a lot of the Title IX advocacy she's been doing about, which she's really become the go-to figure for the right as they try to push back against President Biden's Title IX policy, which is actually really interesting because Biden faced a lot of criticism from the left for paunting on the issue of trans athletes in the updated Title IX guidance.

So there is not any change in how Title IX includes or does not include trans athletes in the Biden administration's update.

What there are are a lot of increased protections for sexual assault survivors.

And so it's a really kind of horrific story that Riley Gaines has gone from, you know, this advocate of fairness in sports to using that experience to argue against increased sexual assault protections for young women who are in college.

So she's actually literally undermining the cause that she says that she's working on behalf of, using trans athletes as kind of a shield.

The other thing that I want to note that's very funny is that, you know, she mentioned that she said a year earlier that she was voting for Donald J.

Trump.

In June 2023, she actually endorsed Ron DeSantis, saying saying that he had tackled these issues.

He's drawn the line.

He said no more.

And then it later turned out that DeSantis had paid her $12,000 to say that.

DeSantis paid her $12,000 for an endorsement?

Technically for political strategy consulting.

But, you know, very often presidential campaigns hire 24-year-olds to be political consultant strategists.

Literally.

Well, but this just, I mean, this brings me back.

Like she says she withdrew her spot at a dental school because it was like a fire was lit within her to fight for women's sports.

I think she was given everything.

She was given way more than she could have ever been given as a dentist.

She got political power.

She got tons of money.

She got fame.

She got a podcasting deal.

She got a book deal.

She got a $20,000 speaking fee.

She got a $12,000 consulting fee from Ron DeSantis.

Like being a dentist is not going to get you all that.

Plus, you have to look at people's teeth all day.

I mean, it does pay very well.

It pays very well, yes.

Probably not as well as Fox News.

Not as well as losing to a trans woman, certainly, or tying.

Tying, Ari.

Tying, I know, I know.

Not you spreading misinformation on the fruity podcast.

One thing I want to mention before we continue talking about Riley Gaines and her career is, and you mentioned this, what is happening to Leah Thomas, you know, the supposed aggressor?

during all of this, this like first year of Riley Gaines' career.

She's becoming a total star.

She's testifying in front of all these different government committees.

She's appearing on Fox News constantly.

She has this Fox-sponsored podcast.

Like, could you explain what's happening or not happening with Leah Thomas during this time?

Yeah, so Leah Thomas had actually attempted to continue her career in swimming and was kind of shot down there by changes to the rules, which seemed at the time to have been written to deliberately exclude her.

And so her swimming career was was over.

She graduated from college.

Everything we know about what Leah Thomas has done since this swim meet basically has come from Brightwing Media because it seems pretty obvious that she doesn't want to be a political or a public figure in any way.

Like she has not spoken at conferences.

She hasn't appeared in political campaign ads.

She hasn't gone out in CNN or MSNBC.

She had a couple of couple interviews where she talked about her perspective in a very, very limited way and kind of disappeared since then.

When Riley and Joe Rogan talked about her, Riley, who seems to have really kept up on Leah Thomas's dating life, was confused that Leah had dated cis women in college, but was now apparently happily in a relationship with another trans woman.

And so then, you know, the two of them engaged in some speculation about what happens when trans women are dating each other, which

I can say usually involves a lot more video games than I think the two of them would imagine.

All I've seen of Leah Thomas is harassment on the internet.

I mean,

she has an Instagram profile that has like eight posts or something over the last several years, and all of them have thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of comments, making her out to be, you know, just the worst thing that you can imagine.

I actually was curious if she had Twitter, and so I looked up Leah Thomas on Twitter, and there's just this one middle-aged white lady from Tennessee named Leah Thomas.

And

I'm gonna,

it's just not Leah Thomas.

I mean, it is Leah Thomas.

It's just not the Leah Thomas.

And her, her bio on Twitter is happily married lady, BTW, I am not the trans swimmer.

Oh, that's so dark.

You know, I think she might be in law school.

It just seems like she wants to just continue living a normal life.

And she's doing that almost, it seems like, in the shadow of someone who continues to need to mine her name and trauma to keep her career moving.

It just seems extraordinarily dark and evil.

Yeah, I think it's worth noting that, like, at the time, there was just not anybody really even defending Leah on the air.

Cable news networks are notoriously kind of unwilling to bring on trans people to share their perspectives.

And one thing we found was that CNN actually spent more time criticizing Leah Thomas's participation than they spent covering proposed trans athlete bans in 27 states for the whole period that Leah was swimming.

So basically, you know, she was swimming while this whole political move was taking place, which is to me really newsworthy, right?

Like a

young trans person five years ago could have fully participated in sports in any state in the country.

And there was this whole movement starting that basically has made that impossible in any red state.

And, you know, CNN didn't cover that.

They spent 15 minutes on segments that were critical of Leah Thomas's participation on the swim team.

They spent two minutes discussing the bills.

I also just think there's this idea, and I'm going to get very like Sarah Marshall, you're wrong about right now, but there's this idea that like people who are at the center of public conversations and cultural movements like make a profit and become rich celebrities in the way that we think about normal celebrities like singers singers or, you know, famous professional athletes.

And the reality is that's just not true.

Like, Leah was not able to make a career out of this.

Riley was, but Leah most certainly wasn't.

And, like, a lot of times, and I think about Dylan Mulvaney too, who does have a career as an influencer and an actress and, you know, was aspiring to be a public figure before and after her whole controversy.

But if anything, Dylan lost money from the whole Bud Light thing.

And a lot of times when you're at the center of these media firestorms, you're just there for a moment and then the storm moves on.

And you don't, you're not left with brand deals.

You're not left with podcasting deals and book deals.

Like you're left with trauma.

The right is often much better at taking these moments and turning them into kind of bankable things, but there isn't some instant mechanism where you become rich off, you know, like even if you're monetized somewhere like TikTok, you're not getting rich off that alone.

And post Dylan Mulvaney, I would say that I think brands are a lot more careful in choosing to work with trans influencers.

So it's made it harder to monetize that way.

You know, it's just another situation where someone who was like 22 years old, had no media experience or training, knows, like seemingly no stated desire to really become a public figure, was just put in the center of this firestorm and will probably forever be defined by how she looked as a 22-year-old one year into publicly transitioning.

And same for Dylan.

I mean, you know, when you see Fox News or right-wing media covering Dylan Mulvaney, it's always with the like early transition pictures, which they love to do, right?

Because, you know, if they were to put up a picture of what Dylan Mulvaney looks like today, like she looks great.

Like she's...

I think been very successful in reaching her aesthetic goals in her transition and seems to be having a good time since that whole thing happened.

But, you know, you can be forever defined on the internet by one instant.

Among other cultural waves that Riley Gaines has ridden as she's become this like conservative A-lister,

she was a big part of the backlash against Iman Khalif.

She had a tweet that got over 500,000 likes and was reshared by Elon Musk.

Hashtag, I stand with Angela Karini, Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports, which she was obviously, you know, wrong about on so many levels.

Iman Khalif is not a man.

Iman Khalif is not a trans woman.

Iman Khalif, as far as we know, does not have XY chromosomes.

Like, this is something that I made a whole other episode about.

We don't have to stay here.

But what's interesting about Riley Gain's involvement with the Iman Khalif issue, or should I say, non-issue, is that she continued to maintain this narrative.

Conservative media people, they just, they can never be wrong.

They can never be wrong.

And she continued, long after the entire story was debunked.

She continued calling Iman Khalif a man.

When Iman Khalif won the gold medal, Riley Gaines wrote on Twitter, Iman Khalif, in parentheses, XY dominated world championship.

Let me repeat that a male has taken a woman's gold.

Later, when Iman Khalif announced that she was suing Twitter for the spread of misinformation and harassment around her, mostly propagated by Elon Musk and J.K.

Rowling, Riley Gaines tweets, since J.K.

Rowling and Elon Musk are being sued by Iman Khalif, I want to take the opportunity to remind you that females don't have a Y chromosome.

And again, this whole thing about her having a Y chromosome, like this wasn't even true.

I mean,

have you ever had your chromosomes tested?

Every morning.

I test them all the time.

It's like not something that you can just walk into a doctor's office and ask for.

It's ridiculous.

Like it's actually way more common than you would think for people to, you know, not have the default chromosomal structure.

And, like, it doesn't fucking matter in the way that, like, all these people think it does.

So, Riley, I think, has been kind of exceptionally dishonest in her use of her platform, which is what makes her kind of a concerning figure.

Like you said, she contributed to this harassment campaign, didn't back down.

She's contributed to a lot of claims about different mass shooters being trans.

You know, the Appalachie school shooter, for example, she said was trans.

And then she actually later did delete and retract that, but it wasn't her fault, right?

She blamed CNN for the way that they had phrased it, that she had interpreted it as this person being trans because nothing is ever these people's fault.

I also, I don't know if you even saw this because it came and went so quickly on like a Sunday evening on Twitter, but there was this whole thing where this one random account shared a very fake story claiming that the VP candidate, Tim Waltz, had had sex with an underage boy.

And Riley was one of the first people in the right-wing media to amplify this like very, very fake claim.

You know, between that and the ways that she's used her.

platform, you know, she referred to an eighth grader as a mediocre man while publishing a photo of her.

Like she's really, I think, pushing the boundaries of how irresponsible you can be with Twitter fame, which, you know, is a real problem.

Another thing we've tracked is that there's been a pattern where, you know, she speaks out against something that's happening at a public library somewhere.

And then all of a sudden that library is getting a bomb threat.

These harassment campaigns come with real consequences.

And it just seems to me like if you have a really big platform like that, you got to take a minute before you post it.

And you have to take some responsibility for what you're saying.

The lack of accountability is incredible.

It's just funny too, because all of these people will

talk all day about how like there's systematic favorability towards the left in the media or something.

I mean, it's like such a Donald Trump thing.

Like the media is always conspiring against him and the media is always conspiring against all these conservatives.

And yet they can just spew bullshit constantly with impunity.

I mean, you know, Haya, the lives of TikTok creator, has so many times said that trans women were to blame for mass shootings.

And to the point where, you know, when she was confronted about it by Taylor Lawrence in the very now internet famous interview, Haya's response was, is there a law against lying?

Was the Uvalde shooter trans?

The Uvalde shooter wasn't true.

Got it.

And so I guess knowing that you've posted wrong information, you're saying it should stay up and everybody else should be allowed to keep whatever they have up as well.

Is that sort of your stance?

Am I accurately understanding it?

Is there a law against no, not asking one?

I'm just asking your personal sort of opinion.

I'm just kind of curious because it seems like you have come after other people, such as vSphere and other critics, saying you posted wrong information about me, take it down.

I totally get that.

That's your prerogative.

It's different with defaming a journalist like that.

They're defaming me.

Uh-huh.

And you don't think that calling a shooter trans when they weren't trans is defaming anyone?

No.

Okay.

Just saying.

Like, she knows that she's being dishonest.

It's my job to track right-wing media figures and what they're saying about LGBTQ people.

And when I started out, I was actually like very genuinely curious about kind of what makes these people tick, what gets these people involved in it.

And I've realized over time that the people who last the longest in this grift are the people who do not give one single fuck about what they're talking about.

Like they have no emotional stakes here.

They're just thinking about how they get the most clicks and the most likes.

And, you know, that's, that's really damning as an indictment of social media and its effect on our media landscape.

So we are at the clips portion.

I have pulled a few clips from various Riley Gaines media appearances.

Ari also sent me, before we started recording, Ari sent me a few clips that she wanted to throw into the mix that I have not watched.

So we'll do a little like tit for tat, shall we?

Oh, this is so exciting.

You should have a theme song for the clips portion for sure.

Now we're going to watch some right-wing news.

The first clip that I want to play for you is one that I find really, really fascinating.

So in this clip, Riley is testifying in front of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, and she is questioned by Utah Senator Mike Lee about whether or not she is transphobic, which just the premise of the question is really interesting.

Like, I don't know, do you get to decide if you're transphobic or not?

I think that's probably something for other people like Ari and I

to raise issue with.

But let's roll the clip.

Let me find it.

Did you watch these?

I have seen most of them before.

I would lose my mind if I had your job because I feel like for my job, I do like 4% of what you do for myself.

This is a really hard job to have as a trans person.

And I just want to say, like, if you are a trans person who is watching this and contemplating a career in media, fucking don't.

Like, go do something that'll make you more money and will not destroy your ability to, like, look at yourself kindly.

It's, it's, it's really not worth it.

Shall we roll the clip?

Let's go.

Are you transphobic, Riley?

That is simply not true.

Do you hold anything against transgendered persons?

Absolutely not.

I agree.

Leah Thomas was following the rules set in place by the NCAA, and I have no problem with Leah Thomas.

I can't believe it's come to this, but I have no hate in my heart towards anyone, even the protesters who mobbed me.

The first thing that I did was prayed for them.

Right-wing people do this all the time.

Like they'll be like, I'm not transphobic.

J.K.

Rowling does it.

Yeah, and I wish they wouldn't.

It's really annoying.

Like, it would be so much more honest if they were like, yeah.

Trans people creep me out for reasons that I can't put my finger on and they make me deeply uncomfortable.

And that's not a thing I feel a need to interrogate.

It's a reason that I don't necessarily find like the label of transphobia to be a particularly effective description because like what matters is what you're doing materially.

And what you're doing materially is making it impossible for 11-year-old trans kids to play soccer with their friends.

So I don't give a fuck what reason you're doing that for.

Like you're making people's life harder.

And it's not like better if you're doing it just for the financial incentives, you know?

Totally.

They do do this a lot.

J.K.

Rowling does this all the the time.

Oh, well, is it transphobic to this, this, or that?

It's like, yeah.

Yeah.

But it's like, I mean, Riley Gaines has openly said on Bill Marsh show, which we'll talk about in a second, but on a whole number of appearances, she refuses to use trans people's pronouns or refer to them as their gender or even like, she won't even refer to a trans woman as a trans woman.

She'll only misgender them.

I don't.

use she, her pronouns when referring to Thomas and I call it a male.

I think even using the the term trans woman is giving Thomas some of our language as women.

And I think trans woman is a subset of male.

I do not believe trans women are women.

And so I'm saying that up front on the record.

No, I'm basically on that page.

She lobbies against legislation that would protect them.

She lobbies in favor of legislation that would ban their health care.

It's like, okay, well, what is transphobia then?

It's like, if none of these things make you transphobic, and people of all sorts of, you know, bigoted backgrounds do this this too.

Like, people say, oh, well, is it racist?

Or I'm not homophobic,

but it's like, what, what does a racist make if not all of the things that you are dedicating your career to doing?

Also, like, I, I feel like Christian's really snapped with, like, I'll pray for you because, like,

I don't know what she's praying for.

Like,

presumably not for me to have like a long and successful career and a stable and happy marriage.

You know what I mean?

Well, I had to include the I'll Pray for Them thing because have you ever seen the video of Anita Bryant getting pied in the face?

Yeah.

What does she say right after she gets pied in the face?

That she's praying, right?

Anita Bryant, 1970s homophobic queen, pied in the face by a gay activist on live television.

She's covered in whipped cream to the point where you cannot see any of her facial features.

And she sits down in the middle of this press conference and goes, Let's pray, Father.

We tried to avoid it and went into a place called Norfolk, Virginia, and were met with protest and

all kinds of problems and

every

security agent, security agent.

No, no, let him stay.

No, let him stay.

Well at least it's a fruit pie.

Let's pray for him right now.

Anita, let's pray.

Anita, why don't you pray?

That's all right.

Father, we want to thank you.

It's like, it is, it's very campy.

It's a good bet, for sure.

Honestly, I think everybody politically politically could learn from that.

And the aesthetics of having kindness for your opponents while not having to actually display any kind of humanity.

It's a really interesting trick.

Okay, so now we're going to play one of your clips.

What's your preface for this clip?

For so long, the right-wing media kind of kept up this pretense that their opposition to trans women was about competitive advantage, which is very smart strategically because then it gets everybody into the weeds of muscle strength and fast switch fibers and whatever.

You have very eloquently said in the past why it's just like not really a good faith debate to get into.

But then this ban came out on trans women playing chess.

And it was so interesting because like the second that happened, they were all like, oh, yeah, no, this has nothing to do with competitive advantage whatsoever.

Does a trans woman have a biological advantage of like moving the pawn diagonally or something?

Well, I guess we should listen to Riley Gaines argue why that is.

Have you really not seen this yet?

I have not seen this.

I'm in for a treat.

World Chess Federation bars transgender women from competing in women's chess events.

What do you make of that?

Not an athletic sport.

It's a mental sport.

I mean, all sports are mental to some extent, but what do you make of that?

Okay, wait, I'm going to continue the clip, I promise.

I just want to say that Riley Gaines is doing this from her car.

Like, this girl is so booked and busy that she is doing the Fox News appearance from her fucking car.

She's been on Fox News 74 times.

So, you know, it's not special anymore, right?

You don't get the same high as the first time.

Still chasing it.

I think it's really interesting because we have sports such as powerlifting, which is of course sheerly based on strength, who aren't even taking this much precaution.

And so I applaud the Chess Association.

It's, you know, you hear the argument about brain size and brain ability if it differs between male and female.

But I think that's missing the point.

The point is that the women's category is meant for women and having men compete in it is still taking spots away from women.

The women's chess category, I guess, was created for a reason and they're upholding that.

And so I applaud the chess association for the decision and really prioritizing fairness, prioritizing what it means to be a woman.

Okay.

Riley, thank you very much.

Good to see you today.

Riley Gaines.

I don't know, when Queen's Gambit, she she was beating all the boys.

So we'll see where that whole argument goes.

Good to see you, Riley.

Thank you very much.

Saying that men are biologically smarter and have bigger brains than women in a feminist way.

What, whatever.

Whatever, Riley.

It's always funny on Fox News when you can tell that the host is like, okay, I'm not really on.

I'm not really on board with this one.

Yeah.

She's like, she's like, the producers are telling me to nod and smile and agree with you, but girl,

be fucking for real.

The thing about Riley Gaines, and I think why the Anita Bryant parallel is so helpful, is that she's a Christian nationalist.

She's an evangelical Christian.

Her worldview flows from evangelical Christianity.

And so, you know, all this stuff about fairness and sports or whatever, like, is a pretense and a cover for the real thing, which is this like very biologically determinist view of what men and women are and what men and women should do with their lives, which is always very interesting with these like right-wing female influencers who are like clearly making a lot more money than their husbands or whatever.

But, you know, that's, that's her circle to swear, I guess.

Totally.

I mean, it's, it's very like making six to seven figures a year talking about like being a traditional woman.

You're so right about the Fox News host being like, hmm, all right, Riley.

Well, you have a great day.

I hope you pulled over.

The next clip I had was one where Riley Gaines goes on Bill Maher's podcast, which just, I want to start by saying that when she's sitting with Bill Maher, their age difference is so apparent.

And Riley Gaines looks so extraordinarily young because she is so extraordinarily young.

Not young enough to like not have agency in the career choices she's making, but it really, it's like, oh, wow, you're like, at this point, like 23 years old.

Also, Bill Maher is like really old and like very clearly deep in denial about it.

Yeah.

Bill Maher, maybe this is a different episode.

Bill Maher pisses me off so bad because it's one thing for all of these people to like be on Fox News and News Max and OAN and whatever they're doing.

And like, we all know why we're there.

We know what ideologies they hold.

But Bill Maher still, you know, and he's been spewing like anti-Muslim talking points for a long time and he's been called out for that.

But he's just, he's going to the right on so many different issues.

And he continues to do this like, I'm a liberal, but like the way the left is going now is just totally off the rails and I need to rein it in.

And it's like, dude, you're just a conservative.

But it's almost like more dangerous to me because he's masking himself as like not the conservative old white man that he is.

Is that a fair assessment?

Well, like the relief with these people is usually they just give up and become Republicans eventually, like Tulsi Gabbard.

Bill Maher's whole shtick is like he's anti-Muslim.

He hates fat people and he hates trans people,

but he's a liberal, I guess, because he like lives in San Francisco and wants to have friends.

Sorry, he lives in Los Angeles, right?

It's a coastal California liberal, you know.

So my, my Bill Maher Maher story is that at one point in my career, I worked with somebody for a time who was like friends with Bill Maher.

And one time over drinks, she was like, I, you would not believe it, but Bill Maher, every time before he goes on the air, he takes an enormous hit of a bong and you would have no idea.

I think we, I think we know.

I think we know.

It's pretty apparent.

Like it's not, he's not hiding it well.

But so Riley Gaines goes on Bill Maher's podcast and basically he is getting her to talk about leah thomas once again he just for like five minutes he's trying to get riley gaines to talk about leah thomas's genitals how big is her

right we all did well how big is it i mean what what kind of a c is it describe her

let's see um well i don't want to see it well i just wanted to hear it well if i had to see it you have to hear it first of all this is a 6'4 man, right?

Well, 6'4.

6'4 woman.

I think, of course, a

trans is a

true phenomenon.

There are some people who are, and I'm sure this is the wrong phrasing, but people know what I mean, born in the wrong body.

Right.

You know, they really do feel and want to be.

the sex they were not born.

I get that.

And those people should be protected and respected.

That is my position as a one-issue candidate running running for governor.

No, protected and respected.

But

I forget what the original question was, but I think it's describe that.

I was trying to run away from this question.

And it's something that Riley is clearly uncomfortable with.

And it's something that clearly, like, sort of irrelevant to the point that Riley's trying to make.

And look, like, neither Ari nor I are here to like white knight for Riley Gaines being able to get her point across on large platforms.

But it just, it's so like misogynistic the way that Bill Maher is treating her on this media appearance, which just stood out to me because it's like, you can be a woman in this space and you will experience the misogyny of conservative men.

That must be like a very strange and difficult thing to deal with, like, honestly.

And, you know, I think it seems like Riley was probably raised within this worldview where she's seen a lot of that, and maybe it doesn't strike her as remarkable.

But again, I just like, if I were getting invited on a podcast where we just like you know where like you were trying to get me to get into like describing somebody naked i'd be like you know maybe something went wrong in my career and the way i'm vetting my media appearances it's really uncomfortable to watch and it's like i don't know Actually, just like, I've been out as trans for so long that I just like forget that people are like so obsessed with what's in our pants.

Like it just, it doesn't strike me as like weird or unusual or, you know what I mean?

And it's like, oh, right.

Like this is like a big reason to a lot of these people that they're like talking about trans women all the time like I mean nobody is more obsessed with like dick size than like a guy like that so next we have a clip that Ari sent me where Riley Gaines is on Fox News she's on Fox News second home is she in a cart this time no she's in her home in this one which she's actually spoken about how she and her husband bought like a multi-acre plot of land and built their own house on it so that sounds lovely Again, what does Riley Gaines get out of this?

Everything.

Riley Gaines joins me.

Okay, Riley, let's get straight at it.

Good to have you back again.

What changed in Title IX and what does that mean for women's sports?

The Biden administration has rewritten Title IX by equating sex and gender identity.

Now this means that men would have full access to bathrooms, locker rooms, changing spaces on college campuses.

Men would take academic and athletic scholarships away from women.

Men have the potential to be housed in dorm rooms with women.

Your speech is now compelled, whether you're faculty, a professor, a student, you are now required to use preferred pronouns.

And if you don't, or if you, a 17-year-old girl who is randomly housed with a male in your dorm room, if you go to your administration and express your discomfort with this, under this new rewrite, you would be guilty and charged with sexual harassment.

We need to see a new administration in the White House.

This is a public call to President Trump to make it a campaigning issue.

Just take me back to the beginning of all of this, because you started, I believe you really started this movement when you objected to losing a swim meat race to a biological male who beat you by a long distance.

That started things rolling.

Just take me back.

What happened to you?

Well, I'll tell you, actually, the scenario here was we tied, but despite time, the NCAA, down to the hundredth of a second, the NCAA insisted that Thomas had the trophy.

She's talking about how the Biden administration has, in her words, rewritten Title IX to equate sex with gender identity, which she says means that men would have full access to bathrooms, locker rooms, and changing spaces on college campuses, that they could be housed in dorm rooms with women, which I don't know about you, but my college actually had like co-ed dorms.

Yeah, mine too.

Like none of this really even scans to me as like an enormous problem.

You know, she's complaining about like having to use preferred pronouns.

And again, like this, I just want to emphasize that the point of this Title IX update was expanding the scope of sexual assault protections for young women in college, cis and trans.

And so, you know, she's using this anti-trans platform to try to take down these protections in the, you know, in the pursuit of making this a campaign issue.

She closes the quote by saying that she wants President Trump to make this a campaign issue and promise to reverse course on what the Biden administration's done.

We now see that this is the closing issue of the Trump campaign, which I, it's not something that I thought would happen.

I really just didn't.

And in part, that's because, you know, in 2022, this was an absolutely disastrous issue for them to focus on in the midterms.

In 2023, it wasn't any better.

And so the idea to me that, you know, that independent voters in Rust Belt or Sun Belt states are making decisions based on, you know, an arcane update to Title IX just like doesn't really make any sense at all and doesn't show up on what people say their top issues are as they're voting this November.

Obviously, we'll see what happens.

And, you know, I think probably one way or another, the media will ascribe more significance to these ads than they deserve.

But, you know, I think it's really significant how much the anti-trans obsessives on the right have a sympathetic voice within right-wing politicians and political spaces that just is not matched on the left.

Well, and she, I mean, she urges, to your point, she urges Trump to make this an issue of his campaign, and he does.

He does.

And it's, and, you know, of course, it's hard for us to say, like, oh, it's because Riley Gaines, but it's also not because of Riley Gaines.

I mean, both she and Donald Trump have demonstrated that she is in his ear, literally.

Like, I don't know.

This is what you can can get in two years after you die in fifth.

It really feels like people should be lining up to compete against trans women.

You too could be Riley Gaines.

Make it in America with this one simple trick.

I've ranted about this in different ways in different episodes, but scapegoating is not new.

It's not unique to trans people.

It's not unique to the United States of America.

Scapegoating is a political strategy that has been effective for leaders wanting to acquire power in so many different cultures throughout history.

And what we're seeing right now with trans people with even who's already a tiny population and even a smaller population within that population, trans athletes, is scapegoating.

I just, I had to get this rant in there because conservative politicians are doing so little to benefit the material lives of Americans and our futures, right?

They are providing tax cuts for billionaires.

They are not addressing climate change.

These people aren't doing anything to better the lives of you or I.

And to convince you that they are, they're going to tell you, look, there's this boogeyman out there.

And they're the reason that your material life is not where you want it to be.

And maybe that's immigrants, maybe that's trans people, maybe it's Muslims.

Like it's, you know, maybe it's Jews.

It's always someone else.

We have the issue of trans athletes.

They're whipping you into a frenzy, thinking that, like, the reason America is not as great as it could be is because there is, I don't know, a trans girl playing field hockey on like the eighth grade field hockey team somewhere in like Illinois.

And it's just, it's just not true.

It's just not true.

They can make all the laws and they can prevent trans people from participating in sports and like who will have won?

Like, your life won't be better.

My life won't be better.

A bunch of trans people and children will be suffering, but like, Riley Gaines will get to buy another plot of land.

That's who wins.

Donald Trump will get elected to president.

The idea that any of this is for you is just so detached from reality.

Yeah, I mean, I just want to underscore the position of the trans community in all this, which is so often left out of these conversations.

Trans people are more than twice as likely to be unemployed.

The underemployment rate for trans people is something like 42%.

The last time I saw statistics, one in three trans people experienced homelessness and youth.

The average trans woman makes 60 cents on the dollar.

This is a very small, very impoverished community that people are just kicking over and over and over again because they don't have any solutions to offer in the government.

And it's like easy to get people scared.

It's just really sad.

Like, I,

you know, I

finally,

I finally did my legal name change the other day.

Oh my God, congratulations.

Yes.

Thank you.

It was really moving.

But, you know, so I had to go down to the courthouse and it was like a hearing that had, you know, there was a woman getting divorced, there were a couple of people getting married.

It was all people changing their name.

And then there were a bunch of trans people.

And when I tell you the way that every trans woman in that courtroom was trying to sink into the bench so as not to take up any space, like I see the way my friends hide behind their hair and their posture and big coats and just are so desperate to not take up as much space in the public eye.

Like I love the mountains, but like there's a reason I want to spend more and more and more time there, right?

I just, it is not a sign of a healthy country to focus so much anger on such a small group of people.

And the thing I always think of there, last thing I'll say, Utah Governor Spencer Cox, he's a Republican.

The first time that a trans sports ban came to his desk, he vetoed it.

And he said, you know, rarely in American history has so much fear and hate been directed at so few.

And I thought that was so moving, right?

A year later, that bill came back to his desk and he signed it.

And he's since gone to sign up.

You know, Utah has made it much more difficult for trans youth to access medical care.

They have a bathroom ban there, which is very sad for me.

Like, I had a trip to Utah that I canceled as a result of that.

The least of the problems, but like, it's just weird to feel your access to the country that you live in shrink as a result of this stuff.

And I just think like, watching this guy call it so accurately the beginning and then still getting swept up in it, like that's what we've all been living through.

This thing where people are just like they know better, you know, they know better, but it's in pursuit of a different political goal.

And so they're willing to hurt those people

in pursuit of that goal.

And they know better, and that should make people angry.

I'm out of angry, I'm just, I'm just sad.

Ari, thank you so much for being here today.

I, you know, I know it has been no easy task for you to like closely track the entire career of Riley Gaines in real time for the last few years, but you know, if it, you know, means anything at all, the light that you've continued to shine on it and helped me shine on it today will, I don't know, help people with their political news media literacy.

I hope make people more critical of what they're hearing.

And I'm just really grateful for the work that you do.

So thank you for being here today.

Thank you so much for having me.

I hope we we can do it again.

Do you have anything to plug?

Where can people find you?

Do I have?

I should be plugging more for sure.

I actually wrote a poetry collection last year that I'm always very, very hesitant to plug because I just feel like if you want to read somebody's like transition poetry, you're going to find it.

But you can find that on Amazon.

It's called Thoughts on Weightlessness.

You know, I think there's some pretty good poems in there.

And that's something that I just don't get to promote as often.

People can find me on Twitter.

They can find me on threads.

I would strongly encourage people who are interested in my perspective to follow me on Substack, which is also our adrenal, just because, frankly, I don't know how much longer any of us are going to make it on Twitter.

And, you know, I would hate to lose track of people.

So find me in all those places.

Find me on Instagram if you want to watch videos of me skiing a lot for some reason.

And that's what I got.

Those will be linked in the episode description.

Thank you if you have made it with us this far far today.

I am so grateful.

Feel free, as always, forward this episode to someone who's like, I don't know, posting Riley Gaines clips to their Instagram story, being like, This chick is a hero for women, because I guarantee you, she is not, and they have been duped.

But it is not too late to undupe them.

I love you all so much, and until next time, stay

in the bathroom.