{"id":834213,"date":"2026-07-29T18:28:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T18:28:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/834213\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T18:28:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T18:28:14","slug":"all-signs-point-to-this-wnba-player-becoming-magas-new-darling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/834213\/","title":{"rendered":"All signs point to this WNBA player becoming MAGA\u2019s new darling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sophie Cunningham is a mid-tier guard on the WNBA\u2019s Indiana Fever who went viral for aggressively pointing her finger<\/a> at an opposing player and hasn\u2019t been part of the starting lineup<\/a> since May. The 29-year-old hoopster can\u2019t steal the spotlight with her game, so she\u2019s pivoting and making her name by being MAGA trash instead.<\/p>\n

Just before the WNBA\u2019s July 25 All-Star Game\u2014which, it must be noted, did not include one Sophie Cunningham, who has never made the All-Star team\u2014she got a weird soft-touch puff piece<\/a> in ESPN thanks to her becoming a \u201ccultural flashpoint.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yeah, that\u2019s just code for \u201canti-trans conservative blonde chick who says bigoted things and gets seal claps from bigots.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even when the author of the ESPN article tries to puff her up, it\u2019s a fail.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"IndianaIndiana Fever\u2019s Caitlin Clark, left, and Sophie Cunningham argue with officials during a WNBA basketball game against the Phoenix Mercury on July 9 in Phoenix.AP<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the league\u2019s sharpest shooters \u2014 she has ranked in the top 10 in 3-point percentage in three of the past five years, and is on pace to do so again this year while shooting a career-best 43.7%.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the top 10. In one thing. In three of the past five years. Got it. We\u2019ve got a real superstar here.\u00a0<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t need to bother with the gazillion words in the article about whether Cunningham is a hero or an enforcer or learn about her childhood or whatever, because all of it is there to soften the core of her anti-trans bigotry, one entirely out of step with the league she plays in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I\u2019m like, I never once said that. I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest,\u201d she blathered. \u201cAnd I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn\u2019t have to go against biological men.\u201d<\/p>\n

This garbage could have come out of the mouth of President Donald Trump. Or his bigoted henchman Stephen Miller. It\u2019s rancid anti-trans intolerance, and Cunningham knows it, and she knows that there is an audience for it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While Cunningham played coy with ESPN about how she doesn\u2019t express her political beliefs, and is \u201cvery much in the middle,\u201d and agrees \u201cwith things on both sides,\u201d and whined that \u201cpeople love to assume\u201d she\u2019s MAGA Barbie, her TikTok account makes pretty clear what her beliefs are.<\/p>\n

To her 3.2 million followers, Cunningham has reposted<\/a> a video slamming immigrants and mocking family separation along with one claiming rap is demonic. She follows Candace Owens and Riley Gaines. She posted<\/a> some \u201cUSA core\u201d that included Trump humping the flag at CPAC in 2020. Your beliefs aren\u2019t a mystery, girl.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration is eager to claim Cunningham, and she seems just fine with it. Over on its official account on X, the Department of Education posted a picture<\/a> of Cunningham in a crown with a caption reading \u201cCommon sense prevails,\u201d after Cunningham doubled<\/a> down on her anti-trans remarks, saying \u201cI said what I said. I think it\u2019s kind of common sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also made sure to praise Cunningham and share that Trump is clinging to her every word, lauding Cunningham for \u201cstanding up for women and girls.\u201d Were Cunningham at all concerned about becoming a vector for the administration to launder anti-trans talking points, she would shut this sort of thing down. Instead, she\u2019s rolling with it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Related | Ivy League university caves to Trump\u2019s anti-trans agenda<\/a><\/p>\n

Cunningham\u2019s accelerating MAGA behavior and fandom looks a lot like an exit strategy for someone wholly out of step with her league and her sport, where the winningest coach of all time, Cheryl Reeve of the Minnesota Lynx, is passionately<\/a>, openly defending trans athletes.<\/p>\n

\u201cExclusion is never the answer, separate isn\u2019t equal, and trans lives matter,\u201d Reeve said. \u201cSo to take away something that\u2019s so valuable that sports brings to young people, in particular, and what it does, as I have a youngster, encourages you to be part of a team and what it gives you in terms of teamwork, leadership, competitiveness, all the things, they have every right to that as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cunningham seems to be banking on the fact that there\u2019s room in the MAGAsphere for another Riley Gaines<\/a>, and sigh, she\u2019s probably right. Gaines has made a career<\/a> out of the indignity, the horror, the civilization-destroying event of \u2026 tying a trans swimmer, Lia Thomas, for fifth place in the NCAA Division I Championships in 2022. <\/p>\n

There seems to be a healthy conservative appetite for middling, conventionally attractive female athletes willing to use their perch to pretend to \u201cprotect\u201d women and girls in sports by trafficking in anti-trans discrimination.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Well, at least if Cunningham leaves for her new lucrative career at Newsmax or whatever, the WNBA can finally be free of her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sophie Cunningham is a mid-tier guard on the WNBA\u2019s Indiana Fever who went viral for aggressively pointing her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":834214,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,569,25474,291153,82,630],"class_list":["post-834213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-culture","tag-maga","tag-sophiecunningham","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=834213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/834214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=834213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=834213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=834213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}