Pablo Torre

And it's Riley Gaines, who is this former University of Kentucky swimmer, who has become, over time, someone who has become the face of what it means to win elections in America in 2025, just like hammering this issue, keep predators out of women's sports, predators meaning trans people, according to her and the MAGA movement,

as well as the face and the voice of people who've been victimized by such athletes.

And so what we did with Mother Jones in collaboration with them and the Center for Investigative Reporting was actually profile Riley Gaines, who is this incredibly important person in politics and now in sports, having been a person who tied for fifth with Leah Thomas, the trans swimmer at the NCAA championships now four years ago.

And the thing we were studying

was like, when did this all escalate to the point where not only can you make money off of this, Dan, but you're actually somebody who has a leadership center named after her.

You're actually somebody who's appearing dozens upon dozens upon dozens upon dozens of times on Fox News, is praised by name in person by President Trump at the White House as they're banning trans athletes and in the process declaring victory

as they are the people who are arguing, this is an 80-20 issue.

The 20% of you woke libs are getting it wrong.

We're winning this 80% of the time.

And so when you go through this, you realize that this was a manufactured story, that Riley Gaines didn't always believe this, that when you talk to her teammates, and we did, they tell you she wasn't anti-trans in college.

She was not pro-Trump in college.

She is somebody who over time got paid to develop an opinion into a weapon.

And she got paid to develop her experience of tying for fifth place at the NCAA swimming championships into a professional victimhood that not only got exaggerated in terms of the rhetoric around it, but truly in terms of the implications for what

It is to be a trans person, as in it became, I was, my colleagues, my friends, fellow female athletes were abused, preyed upon, victimized by these quote unquote men in sports.

And there's a lot in that, but the things that I found all indicate

Oh, wait a minute.

There was a story of victimization in college involving Riley Gaines' teammates, but it wasn't the one that Leah Thomas had allegedly perpetrated.

It was something deeper and darker that Riley Gaines has talked about literally once on Twitter while she makes these dozens of appearances all across the country talking about the real problem is over there.

She doesn't talk about this specific thing, which is, I think, the big part of the story that we report it.

I had not phrased it in my head until Roy just put it that way.