DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—MSNBC host Jen Psaki urged Democrats not to go along with what she claimed was a “manufactured panic” about biological men playing in women’s sports.
The Trump campaign ran ads featuring Vice President Kamala Harris discussing how she pushed “behind the scenes” for “transgender” prisoners to receive sex changes, while now President-elect Donald Trump said he supported banning biological men from competing in women’s sports during an Oct. 16 town hall moderated by Fox News host Harris Faulkner.
Psaki claimed that Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts erred by calling out Democrats over the issue on Nov. 7 and standing by his criticism.
“There’s obviously a lot of soul-searching right now going on within the Democratic Party, and that’s a good thing,” Psaki said.
“But what I worry about is that in the course of all of that soul-searching, some Democrats might reach the wrong sweeping conclusions. And there are a lot of issues that fall into that bucket, but one in particular that stuck out to me is transgender rights.”
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“Immediately after the election, Congressman Seth Moulton told The New York Times that ‘Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face. I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or a formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.’ And then last week, Congressman Moulton came on this network to discuss those comments,” Psaki added before playing a clip of Moulton defending his stand on MSNBC on Nov. 10.
Moulton faced backlash from professors at Tufts University and local Democrats, according to Boston Globe columnist Carine Hajjar, who wrote that the college’s political science department would not facilitate internships with Moulton’s office.
“Look, reflection is good, but if that were actually an issue at thousands of schools across the country, it would be worthy of a debate, but there are just incredibly few examples of transgender girls playing in youth sports. And when we see those examples, there isn’t evidence that these kids are a threat to safety and fairness,” Psaki claimed. “When I say few examples, I mean that if you were to count the examples of transgender girls playing youth sports in any single state, the number often rounds to zero.”
“Take Utah. When a transgender athlete ban was passed there in 2022, there was a grand total of one, one transgender girl playing in youth sports,” Psaki continued. “When South Dakota passed a ban, only one transgender girl had competed in high school sports since 2013. In fact, when these bans were making their way through Republican state houses in 2021, legislators in more than 20 states could not cite a single instance in their own state or region where a transgender athlete competing was a problem.”
The issue of biological males who identify as transgender competing in women’s sports became controversial after Lia Thomas won the 500-yard women’s final participation in the 2022 NCAA championships.
Multiple college teams elected to forfeit matches against San Jose State University’s women’s volleyball team due to the presence of a biological male on the San Jose State roster, according to the Los Angeles Times.
North Carolina high school volleyball player Payton McNabb, who suffered a career-ending concussion when a transgender player’s spike hit her in the face during a September 2022 volleyball match, described ongoing medical symptoms resulting from the injury in legislative testimony given in April 2023 urging the legislature to pass a bill banning biological men from competing in women’s sports.