{"id":901475,"date":"2026-10-31T21:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T21:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/901475\/"},"modified":"2026-10-31T21:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T21:40:09","slug":"linda-cohn-addresses-maga-rumors-amid-caitlin-clark-support","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/901475\/","title":{"rendered":"Linda Cohn addresses MAGA rumors amid Caitlin Clark support"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fox News has gone all in<\/a> on Indiana Fever All-Star guard Caitlin Clark and Fever guard Sophie Cunningham, despite Jesse Watters openly detesting the WNBA<\/a>, and Riley Gaines became Cunningham\u2019s biggest fan<\/a> after Cunningham became the face<\/a> of keeping transgender athletes out of women\u2019s sports this summer.<\/p>\n

Linda Cohn is also a very vocal supporter of Clark and Cunningham on her newly launched eponymous podcast<\/a>, and that has led to assumptions about her beliefs and political allegiances. Cohn really wishes that weren\u2019t the case.<\/p>\n

Cohn, who retired from ESPN<\/a> in June, appeared on\u00a0The Sage Steele Show<\/a>\u00a0this week. The two former colleagues mostly let it rip about their time at ESPN\u201434 years for Cohn, 16 years for Steele\u2014but, of course, they also talked about Clark and Cunningham.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the way, you know that you\u2019re getting called MAGA for some of your opinions, right?\u201d Steele said sarcastically.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, I know,\u201d Cohn said, laughing it off, adding, \u201cThese people don\u2019t know who I am. Way to get that paintbrush out. You better wash your little paintbrush because it\u2019s very busy labeling everybody the same exact way. They have no idea who I voted for. They\u2019d be shocked if they knew who I voted for, OK? So I\u2019d ignore them. I laugh at it now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cohn then recalled her viral take<\/a> about five-time WNBA MVP A\u2019ja Wilson withdrawing<\/a> the FIBA Women\u2019s World Cup due to health reasons<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Will Team USA miss Aja Wilson?? Or will Wilson regret not playing thru her \u201chealth reasons\u201d to help Caitlin Clark and company. \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 https:\/\/t.co\/JMZsQzIPUV<\/p>\n

\u2014 Linda Cohn (@lindacohn) September 4, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIs there any part of A\u2019ja that didn\u2019t want to spend the next couple of weeks watching the World Cup become the Caitlin Clark Show?\u201d Cohn said, in part, on her podcast.<\/p>\n

With Steele, Cohn said that the backlash to that opinion \u201cbothered me a little bit,\u201d though \u201cit was a learning experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat did not go over well because you\u2019re talking about the queen, you know?\u201d Cohn said. \u201cEven though, in that same video, Sage, I said that she is the greatest basketball player in the world. Multiple times. They don\u2019t hear that. So that\u2019s the whole point. That\u2019s the whole MAGA thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t like and support Caitlin Clark without being called MAGA, by the way,\u201d Cohn added. \u201cWhich makes no sense! At all! I can\u2019t root for a kid from Iowa who has set the world on fire? Who has, if it wasn\u2019t for her, we all know where the WNBA would be. Still in the place they were, with all due respect to the OGs before.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

As for Cunningham, Cohn said, \u201cI couldn\u2019t believe what I was hearing at the backlash to Sophie Cunningham. Sophie Cunningham [\u2026] 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\u2019s how I feel: this is nothing against transgender people. This is about the fight [\u2026] for Title IX.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cohn also gave kudos to the aforementioned Riley Gaines, whose anti-trans grift was thoroughly investigated by Pablo Torre<\/a> on his Pablo Torre Finds Out\u00a0podcast.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I\u2019m like, \u2018I never once said that,’\u201d Cunningham told ESPN for a profile published<\/a> this July, setting off a maelstrom of rallies<\/a> and harassment at WNBA games<\/a>. \u201cI 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\u2019t have to go against biological men.\u201d<\/p>\n

In that same interview, Cunningham said, \u201cI\u2019m very much in the middle. I agree with things on both sides, disagree with things on both sides. And that\u2019s all I\u2019ve ever said about my political beliefs. But people love to assume.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s comments<\/a>. Clark has repeatedly condemned people and organizations using her name to push agendas.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think as far as people that have used me to demonstrate racist rhetoric or hate or discrimination, that\u2019s not something I stand for,\u201d Clark said, in part, at her end-of-season press conference<\/a> in early October. \u201cThat\u2019s never been something I\u2019ve stood for. For those of you that know me, that\u2019s not what I\u2019m about. It\u2019s not how I was raised. So that\u2019s really disappointing when people do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fox News has gone all in on Indiana Fever All-Star guard Caitlin Clark and Fever guard Sophie Cunningham,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":901476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[1760,2839,172039,99,377515,351157,434],"class_list":["post-901475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-caitlin-clark","tag-indiana-fever","tag-linda-cohn","tag-sports","tag-the-linda-cohn-show","tag-the-sage-steele-show","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=901475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/901476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=901475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=901475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=901475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}