Mike Rowe / X (Left), Riley Gaines (Right)
CV NEWS FEED // Award-winning television host Mike Rowe is defending star swimmer Riley Gaines, stating that she will be remembered for her “courage” in opposing the LGBTQ movement’s agenda to force females to compete with men in women’s sports.
Gaines recently joined Rowe for an episode of his podcast “The Way I Heard It,” which aired on Tuesday.
During the interview, the retired collegiate swimmer told Rowe: “I’m not here to say I’m against ‘trans’ people.”
“As a Christian, I don’t necessarily support it,” she added. “I believe God made each and every single person on this planet perfect and intentionally in His image, and I think if you alter that you are attempting to play God.”
“But again, that’s the beauty of America. I’m not going to judge someone,” Gaines said. “It’s our jobs as Christians to lead with grace but land with truth.”
After the episode aired, a listener wrote to Rowe: “Is it my imagination, or have you and your podcast become more political?”
On Wednesday night, Rowe responded on X (formerly Twitter). “Hi Carol,” he wrote. “It’s your imagination.”
“I would tell you that I haven’t become any more political than I’ve ever been – but everything around me certainly has,” he wrote. “Or maybe, everything has just become more controversial, and therefore everything feels more political?”
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For speaking out after she was forced to compete against male Lia (born William) Thomas, “Gaines was branded a bigot and a transphobe,” Rowe continued his X post:
She was attacked by protestors at San Francisco State and held against her will for several hours. Her captors were not punished. In fact, they were congratulated by the administrators at the college.
It’s also important to know that Riley Gaines never suggested to me that adults be denied the right to identify as a member of the opposite sex or take whatever steps they wish to take in order to facilitate a physical transition. We both support that right, even if we don’t support the idea that taxpayers should pay for it, or that minors should be allowed to proceed with irreversible surgeries without their parent’s consent.
But mostly, we both believe that it’s fundamentally unfair to allow men to compete against women, and deeply troubling that so many otherwise sensible Americans stood by and said nothing, as the NCAA made a mockery of Title IX, and ran roughshod over decades of hard-fought women’s rights.
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“As I said to her on the podcast, Riley Gaines reminds me of the kid in The Emperor’s New Clothes,” Rowe pointed out.
“[T]he only one in the crowd to point out the obvious fact that the man parading before them was stark naked, while the townspeople pretended, he wasn’t,” he explained:
Just like the townspeople in America who pretended that Lea [sic] Thomas was a woman, simply because he changed his name and claimed to be one. Even when he leapt from a ranking of #462 as “Will,” to #1 as “[Lia],” the townspeople just couldn’t see the difference between him, and the women he so completely and totally dominated.
“Those townspeople will not be remembered for their politics, Carol,” Rowe concluded. “They’ll be remembered for their cowardice. Just as Riley Gaines will be remembered for her courage.”
Gaines herself called Rowe’s reply a “[p]erfect analysis.”
“What a cool opportunity to be able to sit down and chat with Mike Rowe,” she wrote on X, calling the host “[s]uch a smart, reasonable, humble person.”
“Be like Mike Rowe,” she emphasized.
Rowe is best known for hosting the popular Discovery Channel series “Dirty Jobs” during the show’s entire run.
