Stephen A. Smith slams transgender athletes for ‘prying on the rights of females’ as he backs Trump’s ban and fuels fire of 2028 run at presidency
Stephen A. Smith has voiced his opposition to transgender athletes competing in women’s sports as the ESPN star continues to fuel speculation about a possible run for office.
Donald Trump issued an executive order on the first day of second term in office, confirming the administration would recognize only two genders.
The president then announced a ban on transgender athletes in women’s sports, following years of furor surrounding the likes of Lia Thomas and Blaire Fleming.
Smith discussed a possible run for president in 2028 in a recent interview with DailyMail.com. Now he has weighed in on transgender athletes, arguing that they ‘pry on the rights of females’.
‘LGBTQ rights and all that stuff, I’m in full support of that. But when transgender athletes, men are transitioning to women and they’re competing in female sports, that’s a different animal to me,’ he told Bloomberg.
‘That’s not just about LGBTQ rights. That’s about prying on the rights of females out there everywhere who were born female, and they’re at a decided disadvantage.’
Stephen A. Smith has voiced his opposition to transgender athletes in women’s sports
Swimmer Lia Thomas and volleyball player Blaire Fleming have caused controversy
The NCAA changed its policy on transgender athletes in the wake of Trump’s executive order.
Thomas became the first transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division 1 title in 2022, having competed for the UPenn men’s swimming team from 2017-20 under the name Will Thomas.
Blaire Fleming, meanwhile, competed for the San Jose State women’s volleyball team, with several teams refusing to play the Spartans.
The Department of Education also recently demanded the NCAA strip transgender athletes from any women’s titles or records they won after transitioning.
‘We cannot undo the damage inflicted by years of policies and practices that have denied the material reality of sex and conflated that immutable characteristic with a subjective, fluid concept of ‘identity’ by prospectively returning to objective, factual sex classifications in athletics,’ the department’s attorney wrote in its letter, obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller.
‘But we can recognize the harms done and injustices committed by such misguided policies and reversing their effects will restore a genuine commitment to girls’ and women’s equality of opportunity in athletic competition across the United States,’ the letter continued.
Trump’s pick for education chief, Linda McMahon, has also said she opposes ‘biological boys’ having the chance to compete against girls.
‘I do not believe that biological boys should be able to compete against girls in sports, and I think now that certainly not only have the people spoken, because that was something that Trump ran very heavily on, but I believe the court has spoken,’ McMahon said.
