The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: The George Soros of Journalism (feat. his beneficiary, Pablo Torre)
20 Nov 2025
Chapter 1: What is the significance of Give Miami Day?
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Plus, one fan will win a Lely Mays one-of-one game day jacket. Wow. The merch will be dropped on select dates from December to January 21, and it's all courtesy of what brand?
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Chapter 2: How does Pablo Torre analyze Riley Gaines' impact on politics?
Okay, maybe there are two rules, but the one that is 100% that I insist on completely, Jagermeister, must be drank ice cold. Or don't drink it at all.
Damn, that's cold. Exactly. You're finally starting to get it. Drink responsibly. Jagermeister liqueur, 35% alcohol by volume, imported by Mass Jagermeister U.S., White Plains, New York.
This is the Dan Levitar Show with the Stugatz Podcast.
Zaz had to rush out of here. He's got a flight to catch as part of his college football coverage this weekend.
You got to watch some movies on that flight.
And I will tell you, as he leaves, he's going to come back with stories because I don't believe he owns clothing for Madison, Wisconsin, this time of year. I don't believe that he knows what he's headed toward. What's the temperature right now in Madison? Have we gotten to the terrible days of it just feels like nothing but icy cold in your bones?
Or are we not there yet because he didn't tell us he was going to Madison? I have also in front of me an assortment of gifts that we are not using to celebrate what is supposed to be today before Thanksgiving. During the holidays, a time of giving.
Illinois, Wisconsin, really something they're sending them to? 44 degrees out there.
That's actually pleasant. That's not so bad? Okay. For Wisconsin? He hasn't gotten to the bad years yet, or the bad months yet, or the bad weeks. GiveMiamiDay.org is where you go. You've got till midnight tonight. If you're listening to this later in the day, if you're running, we know we're in gyms with you. We know we're in night jobs with you.
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Chapter 3: What are the contradictions in Riley Gaines' messaging?
We've talked everything there is to talk about regarding the NFL. But a couple of things here. We'll start off with number five. Dano, that Davis Mills throw. I know you know the throw I'm talking about. That was a special throw, Dan.
I mean, every once in a while he's going to make a special throw. The Texans shouldn't be saying no way to trading Davis Mills.
How many games have they won since he's been the starting quarterback? All of them. Seems to be doing just fine with that pressure up the middle, Dan. Yep. All right, number four, keep an eye on the 49ers. Brock Purdy looks solid against a good Arizona defense. That NFC West is a, you know what, is a mother.
And I think that Brock Purdy and the 49ers can sneak into a little something-something if they start getting healthy on the defensive side.
Not again. We're not going to do this again with the 49ers, are we? We're going to do this again with the 49ers?
Fred Warner's too much. Bosa and Fred Warner. If he does that, Kyle Shanahan. Put that on the poll.
Put it on the poll at Levitard Show, Juju. Kyle Shanahan, if he does that.
Number three. Jags versus Chargers. We don't know if either team is good. We don't know if either team is bad on a literally week-to-week basis. The Chargers some days are good. The Chargers some days may be good. Some days may be shit. And also the Jags. You beat the Chiefs. You beat the Chargers. And then you lose to whoever they've lost to. The Texans or whoever.
Whatever abysmal loss they've had. They're so weird. They're either good. They're bad. They're not good. You were just talking up Davis Mills and now the Texans is a bad loss?
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Chapter 4: How does funding influence political narratives in sports?
Thank you. That's number one. The Chiefs and the shipping container got absolutely debacled. Debacled.
I'm sorry you guys lost more than $5,000 on a Nick Wright bet. Tony, thank you for the work that you did out there. Get out of there. It is loud. It is loud. I don't believe that we celebrated with enough of the goodies that they sent us. Please continue to give throughout the entirety of the day until midnight tonight.
I have a couple of things Eagles and Chiefs related because I've seen the stat floating around. The Chiefs' offense this year scores more per drive than any of the offenses before it. They're 0-5 in close games. All of a sudden, they go from how we talked about them last year when they were 11-0 in one-score games to they know how to win, they're clutch, Mahomes is the best.
this year, they're better offensively per drive scoring, but they lose the one-score games, and now they play at home against the Colts. And now they're in danger of being 5-6 and having the same record, same number of wins as the Dolphins, a worse record than the Carolina Panthers. Meanwhile, the Eagles have this funny problem. When we talk, Amin, about how much basketball has changed...
Football changing in this regard is funny. It's a funny thing to watch. Jalen Hurts is said to be unpopular with his teammates, primarily his offensive teammates, because they play a conservative, constipated style of football that wins, obviously, in a way that is more than any other team in the sport. But the emphasis is, Jalen, we always win when we win the turnover battle.
So all that matters from the new age quarterback on a champion is don't turn the ball over. Don't throw into tight windows in zone. Don't do all the things that people are doing in football all over the sport. And now what happens? His wide receivers hate him because they'd like to make some money and be good at offense because they can be because they're great.
What a funny thing to have happen in that risk averse sport where the greatest champion that wins all the time, the receivers are really getting mad at their quarterback. Throw into a tight window. No. No, I'm gonna tuck the ball because we win every time I don't turn the ball over. It's a funny controversy to have in the middle of a team that's won 24 of 27 games.
But Dan, that's the beauty of professional sports, right? Professional team sports. It's the balance of your individual goals within the greater agenda of winning. That's what Draymond Green was talking about two weeks ago or whatever it was. How do I make myself look good enough to get paid but also do what the team needs to get wins?
I'd like to bring in Pablo Torre here because the work that he's doing with a team of journalists requires ā it's just not a lot of work, effort, and caring. He's doing a lot of work that other people are not doing, even on well-traversed ground where it's difficult to do new work. So you're attacking something here that is conversationally ā
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Chapter 5: What role do coaches play in the narrative surrounding women's sports?
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.
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Chapter 6: How does Pablo Torre's reporting challenge mainstream narratives?
Oh, come on.
You can't keep doing this. Team B is 8-2.
Team A and Team B played a football game. You can't do this every time, Mike, with this.
All right, all right. So just based on the fact that Donald Trump credited Raleigh Gaines for his re-election, do you believe that if Raleigh Gaines beat Leah Thomas by a millisecond, that Donald Trump is re-elected as president of the United States for a second time?
What?
I had not phrased it in my head until Roy just put it that way. We may be living in a different America. That is how insanely important this issue and resonant this issue seems to be. And the whole thing, Roy, why that's a good exercise here is not just because what a crazy sliding doors possibility.
It's that there is now this entire population of people who claim to really care about women's sports. And their lens to see women's sports through is through the trans issue. Right. These guys who otherwise could not who actually actively insulted women's basketball over the years.
The WNBA, women's sports in general, who are all making fun of it, are now rebranded as the foremost protectors of it because it is politically useful. and because there is the easiest target in America, which is to say the most downtrodden, like attempting suicide at a rate of one in three kind of downtrodden population, which is the trans person in America.
And so the trans athlete, the reason why there's this other story that I've been trying to tell people is because, and this is sort of spoiling the episode, so please go and listen to it in the way the chef intended, but the real thing you have to understand
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Chapter 7: What are the implications of the current political climate on trans athletes?
And I want to be very careful about all of this. But the question of what about men in positions? female locker rooms in college. It's like they already exist. They're called the coaches and they are Larry Nassar. They are allegedly Lars Jorgensen. They are the people who have the power, who are actually men.
Like we're not disagreeing that there are men who prey upon women, young women in sports. The question is which ones allegedly should you care about? And so what's crazy also is that over time, like Riley Gaines has given so many interviews to various podcasts, conservative outlets, TV networks over time that you see the rhetoric, Dan. You see it evolve to be weaponized.
It didn't start off as trans inclusion is the same as sexual assault, is the same as welcoming predators into female locker rooms. It didn't start off like that. But you see over time how they work. And we play the clips. Year to year, month to month, you see the rhetoric change to become more and more criminal and violent in the nature of its allegations.
And it becomes something that many people, many parents, again, like I get it, as the father of a daughter, right? I hear from people now in my mentions who are like, how dare you betray your blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You're an embarrassed blah, blah, blah, whatever. The point is, if you care about... Girls and women in sports, there are issues to care about.
It's just that we're being manipulated through money, by the way, that originates in a key form here. And you alluded to this before, Dan, and I've only gotten to this now, from the owners of the Orlando Magic. The DeVos family has put six figures behind Riley Gaines as this figure. Like they're funding her work, her activism, which gets it all backwards to the profit.
Again, I ask everybody to think of who who profits from this. I would dare say that it's not actually the women and girls that Donald Trump has as these props as he's signing executive orders to ban trans athletes from women's sports.
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Chapter 8: What lessons can be learned from the discussion about media and sports?
Mm-hmm. Always drink your JƤgermeister ice cold. That's the rule. Everything else is merely a suggestion. Everything else? Everything else. Wearing clean underwear every day? Well, that's just a personal decision. Brushing your teeth? Obviously smart, but not a rule. Never pee-pee on an electric fence?
Okay, maybe there are two rules, but the one that is 100% that I insist on completely, JƤgermeister must be drank ice cold. Or don't drink it at all. Damn, that's cold.
Exactly. You're finally starting to get it. Drink responsibly. JƤgermeister Liqueur, 35% alcohol by volume. Imported by Mass JƤgermeister U.S., White Plains, New York.
Dan Levatard. Kermit the Frog here, live from Metalock Media Studios here in Miami. Stugatz. The Germans are advancing on France in World War II. This is the Dan Levatard Show with the Stugatz.
Pablo, I found it fascinating the way that you guys laid everything out in terms of how this grift began and how Riley seemingly learned at each stop on the radio or podcast from Clay Travis to then Charlie Kirk and beyond how to phrase all of this and turn it into a bigger boogeyman. But what you really eventually lay out is how this becomes...
inability to provide the framework to keep people not just out of sports? What is sort of the most dangerous precedent that's being set here? And where can it continue to sort of exclude trans people, not just from sports, but from society?
Yeah, I think it's important to realize that sports is like this gateway drug for lots of cultural issues. It's also the legal framework. These Supreme Court cases working their way through the system now to actually strip the rights from trans people to be just included or allowed in these spaces.
And I think there is an enormous sort of paradox of like, how can this problem, which is vanishingly small in real life, right? So again, the numbers per the president of the NCAA is that there at last check were fewer than 10 varsity D1 level trans athletes, right? So that's less than 0.02%.
That's the moral panic that swings elections that these legislations, these these bills, these legislative efforts that are spreading across American state houses where they can't find the trans athletes to justify the actual legislation and find the people, the offenders to like parade in front of courthouses.
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