Fox News has gone all in on Indiana Fever All-Star guard Caitlin Clark and Fever guard Sophie Cunningham, despite Jesse Watters openly detesting the WNBA, and Riley Gaines became Cunningham’s biggest fan after Cunningham became the face of keeping transgender athletes out of women’s sports this summer.
Linda Cohn is also a very vocal supporter of Clark and Cunningham on her newly launched eponymous podcast, and that has led to assumptions about her beliefs and political allegiances. Cohn really wishes that weren’t the case.
Cohn, who retired from ESPN in June, appeared on The Sage Steele Show this week. The two former colleagues mostly let it rip about their time at ESPN—34 years for Cohn, 16 years for Steele—but, of course, they also talked about Clark and Cunningham.
“By the way, you know that you’re getting called MAGA for some of your opinions, right?” Steele said sarcastically.
“Oh, I know,” Cohn said, laughing it off, adding, “These people don’t know who I am. Way to get that paintbrush out. You better wash your little paintbrush because it’s very busy labeling everybody the same exact way. They have no idea who I voted for. They’d be shocked if they knew who I voted for, OK? So I’d ignore them. I laugh at it now.”
Cohn then recalled her viral take about five-time WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson withdrawing the FIBA Women’s World Cup due to health reasons.
Will Team USA miss Aja Wilson?? Or will Wilson regret not playing thru her “health reasons” to help Caitlin Clark and company. 🇺🇸 https://t.co/JMZsQzIPUV
— Linda Cohn (@lindacohn) September 4, 2026
“Is there any part of A’ja that didn’t want to spend the next couple of weeks watching the World Cup become the Caitlin Clark Show?” Cohn said, in part, on her podcast.
With Steele, Cohn said that the backlash to that opinion “bothered me a little bit,” though “it was a learning experience.”
“That did not go over well because you’re talking about the queen, you know?” Cohn said. “Even though, in that same video, Sage, I said that she is the greatest basketball player in the world. Multiple times. They don’t hear that. So that’s the whole point. That’s the whole MAGA thing.”
“You can’t like and support Caitlin Clark without being called MAGA, by the way,” Cohn added. “Which makes no sense! At all! I can’t root for a kid from Iowa who has set the world on fire? Who has, if it wasn’t for her, we all know where the WNBA would be. Still in the place they were, with all due respect to the OGs before.”
As for Cunningham, Cohn said, “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing at the backlash to Sophie Cunningham. Sophie Cunningham […] never said she was anti-trans. Never! But yet, the naysayers, those who hate, those who love to find something to criticize immediately went there. And spread a narrative that was not factual. So she had to say it again. And that’s how I feel: this is nothing against transgender people. This is about the fight […] for Title IX.”
Cohn also gave kudos to the aforementioned Riley Gaines, whose anti-trans grift was thoroughly investigated by Pablo Torre on his Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast.
“I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,’” Cunningham told ESPN for a profile published this July, setting off a maelstrom of rallies and harassment at WNBA games. “I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”
In that same interview, Cunningham said, “I’m very much in the middle. I agree with things on both sides, disagree with things on both sides. And that’s all I’ve ever said about my political beliefs. But people love to assume.”
Clark, meanwhile, has become a conservative icon in the culture wars. The 2024 No. 1 overall pick has never publicly aligned with any political party or specific causes, including in the aftermath of Cunningham’s comments. Clark has repeatedly condemned people and organizations using her name to push agendas.
“I think as far as people that have used me to demonstrate racist rhetoric or hate or discrimination, that’s not something I stand for,” Clark said, in part, at her end-of-season press conference in early October. “That’s never been something I’ve stood for. For those of you that know me, that’s not what I’m about. It’s not how I was raised. So that’s really disappointing when people do that.”