The WNBA Became a DEI Circus—Now Caitlin Clark Could Pull the Plug

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of the latest edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to Victor Davis Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.

Victor Davis Hanson: That Turkish player who’s changed his name to Freedom, his last name, and he was there and he was cheering on Sophie Cunningham. And that [Natasha] Cloud player, she went all the way over there and tried to instigate.  

And then they had some fouls that you would not believe this last two weeks. Tackling people. Caitlin Clark hits a three-pointer and a girl goes by and just hits her. 

It’s pretty much what they don’t … Just to sum it up, it’s basically 65% black and 30% gay. And the owners are all radical, a lot of them gay, and it’s completely a money-losing proposition, and it would cease to exist if it wasn’t for the National Basketball Association, the men subsidized it.  

And the owners are left-wing, and the referees are left-wing. And it had their own little cloister, and they were very happy losing money and flying commercial and making $80,000 a year, and no one cared. 

And then Caitlin Clark, Sophie Cunningham and a few white players came in who were really good, and there were tensions because of their race and their sexual orientation being heterosexual, and they started using violent means to vent. They were venting not because they were worse off. They were venting because they were better off. 

In other words, like Tocqueville warned us, they would rather all have their little equality with each other and be poor than some people be better off than they are. And so when they saw Caitlin Clark‘s salary, $20 million, I don’t know, and her endorsements and salary combined, she’s making $20 million or more a year. 

They said, That’s not fair. We’re a black league, we’re a gay league, and we have a certain code, and we’re left-wing. You can’t have this person from Indiana coming in here, Iowa. We don’t want that. We’re going to rough her up. We’re going to rough her up, all these people.” 

And then it turned into the most … It’s really despicable to watch it now. They just, it’s just they go in, and they try to punch people in the face. They did it to another girl on the ground the other day. They hit her really hard in the face. They push people. They go out in the stands and start arguing, and then they get the league. 

If you wear a T-shirt that suggests that you might not support biological men, they get an owner to go shout in your face. And Mr. Freedom, the basketball player, they just ejected him for wearing … 

I guess what I’m saying is they don’t have any rules because they said that men that have biological musculoskeletal frame and have male, had for most of their life male hormones and have not had radical transition surgery, they’re women. 

But when you see these powerful men in the ex-NBA and they want to say they’re women for a while, they say no. And then you ask them, “What is your definition?” They do have a definition. You know what it is? It’s a de facto. 

And they’re saying, just like Ward Churchill, you say, Ward, if you say you can be Indian and Native American, what’s stopping some other guy just saying, “For today, I’m applying for assistant professorship of anthropology and I’m Cherokee,” because you did it? 

And he said, “Ah, not so quick. I did the whole rigmarole. I wore buckskin and I had a headband and I did [mouth noises]. I did all these chants and I married …” 

So that’s what he said and that’s how it worked until he was caught. So what they are saying, think about it, they are saying, “We will let trans people, but you got to go through the whole thing. 

“So Mr. Freedom, you’ve got to start wearing a dress and a wig and makeup and breast suppressors and crotch suppressors and maybe some female hormone shots to get that beard off. And if you can act like you’re a woman, then we might consider your … But you, and if you can do that and you look good in a dress and you look good with a ponytail, then maybe we don’t really care if you beat the blank out of women because you’ll be a trans woman.” 

But you don’t do that. You don’t go through all the trouble.  

Sami Winc: So they rejected his application to be in the draft today?  

Victor Davis Hanson: Not today, but they’re going to.  

Sami Winc: They’re going to. 

Victor Davis Hanson: And all the players will boycott if he does. 

Sami Winc: Yeah.  

Victor Davis Hanson: And because he’s making fun of them. He’s saying, “If you can declare your sex or gender, I declare that I’m a woman.” 

But they look at him and they say, “Oh my gosh, he’s going to beat …” And the people who are angry about it are the big girls who have been dominating and fouling and hitting people, and they see this guy and think, “Oh my God, he doesn’t like us and he’ll come in and be the enforcer of the whole league and start slapping us around because-” 

Sami Winc: One accidental hit will take them out. 

Victor Davis Hanson: Exactly. He’ll say, “I’m a woman and a woman, if you hit me, woman, I can hit you back.” And so that’s what they’re afraid of. 

The whole thing is so corrupt. I think you’ll see within 24 months Caitlin Clark, Sophie Cunningham, a few other white players and a lot of black players that don’t do this, and they’re just going to say, “I quit,” and either form their own league or … 

Sami Winc: Go off to Europe. 

Victor Davis Hanson:  Because the owners are all left-wing and trans, pro-trans and intolerant, and they look at it, not as a basketball league, but a way to express their political views, and they censor who can come in and who can’t come in, and then they get out, as owners, they go in and scream at fans they don’t like, and then the coaches don’t even support the players. 

That Fever coach gave that profanely written, outraged, diatribe when people said she didn’t defend Caitlin Clark when she was smashed. 

It’s toxic. And then when you see the referees and somebody goes in there and just punches somebody, and they say, “I didn’t see it,” and it’s so corrupt from A to Z. 

Sami Winc: Yeah, it’s very unprofessional, and people are gonna be- 

Victor Davis Hanson: I think Caitlin Clark should pull the plug– 

Sami Winc: Yeah … 

Victor Davis Hanson: And say, “You know what? I get beat up, and I bring in a billion dollars in revenue and endorsements for the whole league, and you’re all flying on Gulfstreams now, and you’ve got great salaries. 

“I’m tired of being beaten up and called all these names by you guys. Just go get your own little league and call it the,”  

I don’t know what you’d call it, “The Trans League or the Gay League or the DEI League,” or whatever you wanna do, call it that. But this is outrageous, and I can’t believe they’re letting them … 

They’re gonna see within a couple years, if they don’t do that, there’s gonna be somebody with a spinal injury or a concussion, a real brain injury, because what they’re doing is just mixed martial arts. 

Sami Winc: And they’re sucker punches, basically. They’re sucker hitting people that are not ready for it, and that’s very dangerous. 

Victor Davis Hanson: And the weird thing about it is, this is what is even stranger. So rather than clamp down on all this, and you would think logically the publicity- 

Ninety percent of Americans hate the Women’s Basketball Association. They’ve been exposed to it, they’ve watched it for a year or two, and they don’t like it because it’s so violent, and it’s racist, and it’s sexist, and they don’t like anything about it. 

But they’re watching it now because it’s like Lucha Libre. Let me turn on that WNBA and see who gets hit and what they do about it, and then the screaming and yelling. It’s sor of like World Wrestling Federation. 

It is. It’s the World Basketball Wrestling Federation.  

Sami Winc: And that’s right.  

Victor Davis Hanson: And that’s got a big … They make millions of dollars. That’s what they’re doing now. 

Sami Winc: Yeah.  

Victor Davis Hanson: Basically, they said, “God, we’re getting bad publicity. We’ve gotta talk to our accountant.” 

And he said, “Yes, you’ve got terrible publicity and everybody hates you people, but I’m looking at the books. We’re never making more money. And it’s just keep it up. Keep the racism up, keep the socking people in the back, keep the clotheslining people in the neck, stomp ’em on the ground, put your hand on their jugular, and just keep watching World Wrestling Federation. 

“Get tips on the best things to do.” 

Sami Winc: And show us what the ultimate conclusion of DEI is. 

Victor Davis Hanson: You know what the next thing will be? The next Orwellian thing will be is that all these teams during practice- 

Sami Winc: Yeah … 

Victor Davis Hanson: They’ll have 50 minutes for basketball practice and then 50 minutes how to hurt people. How do you dribble down and then elbow somebody? 

Or then, how do you step on a person’s head? 

Sami Winc: Yeah.  

Victor Davis Hanson: What kind of four-letter words should you use? 

Sami Winc: Yeah.  

Victor Davis Hanson: They’re all foul-mouthed too. 

Yeah. Right in front of these kids. 

That Freedom- That Turkish American player was saying, “Why is she saying this?” She walked- That Cloud girl went, walked over and said to him, “You wanna- You’re clapping for Sophie ’cause you wanna sleep with her.” 

And he said, “I don’t wanna sleep with her. I’m clapping her ’cause I’m a fan of what she stands for.” 

And then he got up, and the next thing the player starts screaming. I think her name is Cloud. She started shouting obscenities at him, and then she had to be restrained, and then she- made this whole psychodrama, and then they kicked him out. 

And that was all national. That was all televised. 

Sami Winc: Yeah. And they did it all, huh? 

And they kicked him out. They did it all, and they kicked him out.  

Victor Davis Hanson: It’s like the World Wrestling Federation. It really is. 

Sami Winc: So WNBA stands for Wrestling National Basketball Association. I love it, Victor. 

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