A former Trump administration official hit at Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley on Monday for talking about men competing in women’s sports, saying it was “red meat” for the Republican base.
“I’m not sure that I think this is the women’s issue of our time, and I’ve said this before. Listen, she needed to throw some red meat to the base,” Alyssa Farah Griffin, former White House Director of Strategic Communications and a current “The View” co-host, told “CNN This Morning” co-anchor Poppy Harlow about Haley’s appearance at a CNN Town Hall on Sunday. “Last night felt very much like a general election performance for a Republican candidate until she got into the trans issue and guns issue.”
Haley called the participation of biological males in women’s sports “the women’s issue of our time” during the CNN Town Hall, where she also slammed former President Donald Trump and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis over entitlement reform.
“I remind folks, this is an issue that is the minority within the minority. The trans community is an incredibly small community within the United States,” Griffin said. “Then break that down even further to it dealing with athletes in high school or collegiate level. That’s something that I think a conservative can push back and say, ‘why can’t local governments deal with this? Why can’t school boards? Why can’t the NCAA? Why does it require the federal government and the presidency to deal with it?’”
The Biden administration proposed new regulations involving Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination, on April 6 that would prohibit schools from imposing “categorical” bans on transgender athletes. The issue became controversial following the participation of Lia Thomas, a biological male, in the 2022 NCAA championships, where Thomas won the 500-yard freestyle.
Half of the nation’s governors called on the Biden administration to withdraw the proposed regulations May 12.
“I’m not sure that has a lot of legs to it,” Griffin said.
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