Michele Tafoya Joins!

**Jason Hammer** (0:00)
My name is Nigel, Jason Hammer, right over there with a very special guest on the hotline.

**Nigel** (0:05)
Joined by one of the greatest to ever do it.

**Jason Hammer** (0:07)
Yeah.

**Nigel** (0:07)
Greatness, standing by Emmy Award winning sports journalist and current candidate for a US. Senate seat in the great state of Minnesota, Michele Tafoya with us. Michele, thank you so much for taking the time to join us here in Indy, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you were part of that pregame pro-women's event before the Fever and Lynx game yesterday. Is that correct?

**Michele Tafoya** (0:34)
Yeah, I was there. I saw it all.

**Nigel** (0:37)
All right. So tell me how the crowd response was, because as we've seen, you know, from a distance here in Indy, conservative values don't go over real well in certain parts of the country. And this fever road trip has been Seattle, Portland and Minneapolis. So tell me how this was taken by the crowd.

**Michele Tafoya** (0:59)
You know what?
You just laid that out so well about this road trip.
Listen, Sophie Cunningham has become a hero to a lot of people, myself included. And here's why. She is an active professional player who's got everything on the line, and she's not shying away from this issue like so many are. Many of her teammates, many of the Minnesota Lynx players. And she's just, she does it with class, with integrity, and in a way that is hardly hateful. So we all are excited about her. Jennifer Say, who's the creator of XXXY Athletics, is a friend of mine and she called me a few nights ago and said, do you want to come down there with me? And I said, yes. So we got, you know, we knew Riley Gaines was going to show up. And so it was strange. I think the opponents, if you will, the counter-protest was pretty small, but very, very loud and obnoxious. I think we had more people there. But we weren't allowed to say anything because they just wanted to drown us out. They did it with their bullhorns. They did it with sirens.
And meanwhile, we're just there to thank a player for saying what so many people won't say. And it seems to me this particular issue, you can call it a quote unquote conservative issue, but this is like an 80-20 issue. And not 80% of the country is conservative. So this cuts across the political spectrum. And we had a number of Democrats there who, one woman was holding up a sign that said, Democrats for Title IX. And I heard from others who said, I'm a Democrat. I'm so glad you were there. So it was a really interesting, the whole scene was quite something.

**Jason Hammer** (2:45)
And you said they were louder than you, even though they were the vocal minority. I think that's like analogous of social media in general.

**Michele Tafoya** (2:54)
Yeah.

**Jason Hammer** (2:55)
Isn't it?

**Michele Tafoya** (2:57)
Yeah. I mean, they brought multiple bullhorns. And you know, there's a setting on a bullhorn that you can just push a button and it plays this siren basically. And that's what they did. Every time any one of us tried to speak, they just did that. They used a lot of profanity. They, again, I think there were probably only five or six of them. There were a lot of people there just with iPhones recording the whole bit, but loud and obnoxious.
And the rest of us were just trying to show our appreciation for Sophie.

**Nigel** (3:30)
And Michele, the thing that's frustrating for so many folks that support Sophie Cunningham is that this isn't even really about whether or not she's pro-trans or not. She stated last week, there's room at everybody's table. I love everybody. I'm not against the trans community, but I want to protect women's sports. Biological men should not be changing in front of women. They should not be competing against women. But so much of her message gets cut off and left out.

**Michele Tafoya** (4:01)
Well, I think what the left really enjoys doing is conflating issues. It reminds me a lot of immigration.
If you are against illegal immigration, particularly criminals immigrating here illegally, they call you anti-immigration. That's just simply not the case. My dad is a son of immigrants, so I'm not anti-immigrant, but that's what they do. What they're trying to make this is, you're transphobic if you believe this.
No, that's not even a little bit true. That has nothing to do with it. This has to do with protecting women's sports and women's rights, which we have fought a long time for. I was a little girl when my dad came to me and said, guess what, this Title IX is going to change your life.