Bulwark Takes - The Story Riley Gaines Doesn't Want to Tell (w/ Pablo Torre)

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

Tim Miller and Pablo Torre break down how Riley Gaines went from a college swimmer to a full-blown MAGA political figure—how her story was reshaped by conservative media, why her rhetoric escalated, and why severe abuse allegations inside her own program barely get mentioned. Read the full story at Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/11/riley-gaines-anti-trans-lia-thomas-ncaa-trump/ Watch PABLO TORRE FINDS OUT on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PabloTorreFindsOut ..and subscribe to PABLO TORRE FINDS OUT on Substack: https://www.pablo.show

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We believe OCT scans are so important they're included with every standard eye exam. Book an eye exam at Spexavers.cavers.caps. I exams are provided by independent optometrists. Visit Spexsavers.caver to learn more. Hey, everybody. It's Tim over the Bullwark. I'm here with my buddy, Pablo Torre. If Pablo Tori finds out the only millennial doing more content than me out there right now. I mean, dude, where do you find the time? How many hours are in your day, Pablo Torre? All you got to do, the key to making more content as an elder millennial is to ignore your daughter. And so when you do that, Tim, you might consider that the ultimate life hack is being a bad father. Okay. I'm not ignoring my daughter. So I don't know. That's the competitive. edge that I have. Okay, got it.

That's right. You're putting a few more hours in. That's okay. There'll be time on the back end. There's always time for parenting and love. I'm told that generally speaking, podcasting is what people regret on their deathbed. They didn't do more of it.

I didn't podcast enough. Living up to that aphorism. You have a bunch of like kind of politics adjacent pots. People don't know. Pablo is of ESPN fame and has just gone out on his own, struck out on his own, so to speak. And Pablo Tore finds out is, It's investigative reporting. It's sports. It's news. I mean, you've been on the page before. For new people, you get, you know, sometimes it's really sportsy and other times you're getting into other stuff.

Yeah, it's journalism solving mysteries. They tend to be about sports, but they tend to also take us into squarely political topics in which sports happens to be, Tim. I don't know if you've noticed this. The crowbar that a certain political party is way better at using to pry open wallets and votes. And so in that. regard, it ends up inevitably being a story about the time we are living in it. Speaking of how much better that political party is at using sports, boy, being in Tiger Stadium the weekend after Charlie Kirk's assassination was really something. I mean, it was just, I haven't, like, it was great. Like, truly insane, I was sitting at, I'm like, I'm the only person in the section that knows Charlie Kirk, actually, and I think, I don't know, maybe one other guy has been to a TPSA thing, and the whole crowd was just wrapped by the honorific that,

that led the football game. Wild World. Anyway, let's go down to business. Your most recent one, well, it's not your most recent, but the most recent one that is making waves is about Riley Gaines. Like how JayvL wrote a little bit of a spin-off on it for the Triad Newsletter this week. People caught that.

Rally Gaines was the daughter of Rowdy Gaines, famous swimmer. That is not, that's not her dad, but God, it would make more sense if it was. It's not. Brad Gaines, an obscure Philadelphia Eagles player who's had a cup of coffee in the NFL is actually her dad. Really?

Yes. Yes. I apologize to Rowdy for smearing him. It's a compliment and a smear that she would come from that lineage, but she comes from, in fact, football stock, SEC stock. Her dad went to Vanderbilt and played football. Now, that's making way more sense. This is why you find out, and I'm just a commentator.

So Riley was on the Kentucky swimming team. Yes. She was defeated by Leah Thomas, the trans swimmer at Penn. Well, I got to stop you there, Tim, because if Leah Thomas never existed, Riley Gaines would have had the exact same finish, which is fifth place. They tied, and down to the tenth of a second. It's kind of like the origin story of this whole thing is they tied for fifth place. Well, she would have had fifth alone.

So she would have had the honor of not having to share the fifth place college swimming title, with Leah Thomas. This is kind of the villain origin story of Riley Gaines. She gets out, she's so outraged that this happened that she becomes a vocal

spokesperson against having trans women competing in women's sports. I have some kind of complicated views on that. We'll get to that in a second. But the interesting thing is that this like becomes her like reason for existing. Her raising a dad trusts her life's work. I've seen her speak at a lot.

lot of right wing events. She's on Fox all the time. She's just like, this is it. Like she, this, she has taken this on and has become the face of this. You spoke to many of her teammates at Kentucky. And the story gets a little bit complicated, especially when you consider that the context of a lot of her advocacy is that she's just out to protect women. She's concerned about women and girls. They don't want to have to share a locker room with trans girls. And, and protecting women is a big concern of hers. So talk me about how that story gets complicated. Yeah, so we reported this story with Madison Polly at the Center for Investigated Reporting slash Mother Jones. That's who did a lot of

the legwork here. I want to make clear though at the top before I explain what's complicated that this is simple in some ways because this is not a story at all about advocacy for trans inclusion. I don't, frankly, in this specific conversation, I don't care what anyone's view is about for or against, yes, trans girls should be playing on girls' teams. You could have a difference of opinion there. That's actually a reasonable, scientifically informed debate we can have. This story, though, is about Riley Gaines and the evolution of Riley Gaines as its political operative that you just described because the question of what's complicated got complicated

because when you listen to what Riley Gaines was saying from the beginning of her story in which he ties for fifth with Leah Thomas, the argument goes from, man, I'm disappointed by this. and I don't personally blame Leah Thomas all the way to, fast forward, the thing that tips the election, you could argue, which is an argument of I was sexually assaulted because I had to compete with a trans athlete in college. And so the argument goes from this thing about should Leah Thomas be allowed to swim against me to these trans athletes are predators who are guilty of something that is equivalent morally to sexual assault. Those are the words that Riley Gaines says at the prodding of people.

And you go through the sort of mortal combat ladder of conservative hosts from Ben Shapiro in the Daily Wire to Clay Travis and out kicked Tucker Carlson on Fox News. You go up and you see through the journey of just listening to the tape the ways in which this rhetoric escalated and got well. And I mean that almost literally in the sense of these words got used against a population of people who were never accused before this era of in this swimming context being predators. Right. And so the complication, of course, is one that was brought to us because the story we tell is told through the voices and the eyes of Riley Gaines' former teammates at the University of Kentucky who point out something essential, which is, They had to watch Riley Gaines go through this whole victimhood industrial complex that earned her money, lots and lots of money over time, swung elections in ever more increasing and pervasive ways, while also the real story of victimization of their team was largely, if not entirely, being ignored. And that's Tim, the story of the head coach of the University of Kentucky swim team, Lars Jorgensen, who Riley Gaines has described in her book.

as one of her best friends, a mentor, someone, the person who brought her to UK, a person that as recently as a couple of months ago, she called a terrific coach because Lars Jorgensen has been accused of raping multiple members of the University of Kentucky women's swimming team. Riley gains his teammates. And she has spoken as a matter of contrast against the mortal combat ladder of victimhood, industrial complex stuff we described before. She's talked about Lars Jorgensen, I mean, never allowed, but sent one tweet about it. And that was before, by the way, she compared her personal situation to what Simone Biles experienced when she was literally sexually assaulted by Larry Nassar in another Twitter feud. So the complication, I think,

is through the eyes of the people who actually know her and competed alongside her. And that tweet she sent was like before this recent, like recent compliments of him, right? Like when the first story about him came out, she did, she posted. I, I, I, I always, want to hear more about Jorgensen, but like, just for people that are watching, because you know, we have folks that have differing views on this, and we can maybe do a whole separate app on this where I talk about the trans women in sports. I just want to talk about why this caught my eye, why I wanted to talk to you about it in particular. And it's more about just like, like the fact that this person, Riley, could experience these two things at

the same time and decide that the one that was a bigger threat to women was the trans, woman that was competing against her. Because, like, for my position, I think that it's, I think that it's complicated. There are certain cases where I think that, you know, that people make a big deal out of nothing when it comes to trans girls playing in sports depending on age. And I think there are obviously these are things that you should like, the Olympics should be caring about, not, you know, senators. Like, you know, I watched a Fox show. I was one time watching Foxx and they were talking about a trans girl that was competing in a skateboarding tournament and how she won. And I was like, I'm not sure what the advantage was there exactly.

The swimming case, it's kind of like because they're just a physical and biological nature of it, and it's not a team sport, it's individual, and it's just, look, this is who can swim faster. Obviously, Michael Phelps can swim faster in Katie Ledecky, right? And like, you know, so I think that there is a biological element to this. I'm sympathetic to the point of view that, like, probably a trans girl shouldn't be competing in women's college swimming. My brief summary is that there should be rules regulating testosterone primarily, but just like competitive advantage whenever possible. And if you want to argue, man, I can't justify this just because I think about those edge cases that are like one in a zillion.

I actually understand. That's an okay position to have. And that's a separate, I would say, agreed. There's a separate episode in which that's the actual substance of the debate. I'll work through that. So then to me, it's like, okay, once that's kind of stated out there, like the interesting thing about Riley is like, how can you, it's almost a psychological question. It's a psychological question, it's a question about our politics, that you can decide, wait, I can actually gain more fame and influence, you know, by having experience this on this women's swim team in Kentucky, and having experience, having a coach who allegedly sexually assaulted my teammates and was an actual threat and menace to girls who are competing in sports. And I can also compete against a trans swimmer. And that I could decide that that tie that I had with a trans swimmer was the thing that is the real threat. of girls, not the coach that's actually assaulting them.

And to me, like, that bifurcation is what makes the story so interesting. And it has so much, I think, I think it says so much about what's happening in our political culture and our discourse right now. Yeah, look, my mentions right now are a super fun site. It is unviewable, basically, at the moment. And a lot of the debate, they want to have it, people who are like pro Riley Gaines, let's call it. They want to have it on the basis of inclusion of trans athletes and stuff that we just said.

There is a debate there. The conversation that no one can really explain to me is why, if you're looking at weighing harms here, we're not all talking about the thing that happens actually with a degree of frequency that is undeniable, which is male coaches, assaulting their own players. And so the whole thing of like, how dare you have men and women spaces? I'm like, okay, let's have the conversation, but just understand that the history from Larry Nassar to allegedly Lars Jorgensen on down the line is full of actual case studies of harm that no one seems to care about. And so, Tim, this is where like the overlap happens. The trans issue, because there are so few trans athletes that exist, it has been a political win in search of victims. Right. And Riley Gaines, as much as she is, central casting in terms of who you want to see on a stage at CPAC, she is also someone who, from Leah Thomas's perspective, as per her own quotes, in the days after she tied with Leah Thomas, there was no actual harm along the lines of predation and assault that happened. But over time, as money is going into her bank account, and we follow the money, by the way, throughout the story through tax forms in terms of her leadership center, who's funding that, and the DeVos's. by the way, Betsy DeVos is putting six figures into Riley Gaines's pocket and she's getting paid 25K his speech and all this stuff is happening.

You see that the incentive structure reveals itself because of our American political climate in which being this victim that indicates that a trans person is not merely an unfair competitor, but actually a threat to you, an innocent girl, that is a winning issue because people, men, let's be honest, they don't give a fuck in the men. about, oh, wait a minute, there's a problem in women's sports with the coaches, molesting. It's like, we've heard that a zillion times before. The trans athlete, though, I think psychosexually, frankly, activate something in a voter that's just different. And they've realized it and they're running that play as much as possible. God, that's so strange, though, because everybody, like, knows somebody who's had experience with, like, a woman in their life, you know, that has had some kind of, you know, unwanted

sexual advance against them. And so that should be something that connects with everybody. And I just think about this. It's funny you mentioned, like, the victim, the rewarding of the playing, you know, victim here as, as Riley did when she had some teenagers who are actually victimized. And like, she's playing victim for tying and for fifth. And like Ben Shapiro was one of the first people to give her a platform. Ben Shapiro is on his whole book tour right now about how, like, about how victim culture is a problem in America and how we need more lions and not lambs. And it's like you imagine a, um, an alternate universe, right?

where Riley Gaines had decided, hey, I'm going to become an advocate for female athletes who are, you know, sexually assaulted by figures in power, by coaches. And, you know, I'm going to, you know, do a press conference about this. And, like, I'm going to try to find some money and start a nonprofit. I'm going to go out and talk about that. Like, you can imagine some, like, whatever. She might be able to get on Pablo Tori finds out. I'm not saying there's no interest in this.

There might be one Today Show segment about this. would like to think yeah but there's no way to imagine what there's no way to imagine is that that can be that would become the platform for her to become a massive political figure speaking at presidential events you have it and all you know a content mill of her own that makes money you're right like the like the scale of her ability to me that is like the heart of the story like that she was able to take the trans issue and and become this political superstar in which it's just hard to imagine she could have done that had she spoken about the actual harm to her teammates. Well, and we know that for a fact because we've run that experiment and it's just called American history. Like, I mean, just we don't

know who that person is because they've never been elevated in that way. Donald Trump, when he puts those, you know, those truths out and he has the list of things when he was trying to distract us from the whole Epstein thing. And it was like, look at all I've done for you. He puts trans in there. Yeah, right. And that's not because it's a personal passion project. It's because I think it just works. do want to just acknowledge like politically speaking it works i get it i get why you run the play the question is of course and i mean this in all sorts of ways financially and just from a rights a human rights perspective at what cost who pays that price and in some cases it's the dark money flowing in to riley gains his pockets in other cases it's truly a vulnerable population that is

already at risk by the way of suicide at a rate of almost one in three attempted right like which is just crazy. And I just want to acknowledge that just because it's also statistically a thing to consider. Those people who are just trying to like, frankly, blend in in impossible ways and play sports end up being recast as these people that we need to hunt with pitchforks and torches. And that, that effectiveness is indefensible to me. And it's indefensible because it's actually working. Yeah. I agree. It's indefensible in a vacuum, but it's just, in this case, it's just so stark

because, like, it's inevitable as compared to the other threats that were, she was experienced. And, by the way, this is not me being like, oh, it was, it was morally, you know, Bradley Gaines was morally obligated to go out and become an advocate on behalf. It's not that. It's just, like, these things happened. She identified one of them as something that was a major threat that, and that she was going to make her whole career about.

And it was, you know, this, this issue that isn't, A, not. really causing material harms to other people. There's not, there's not like all the abundance of cases of trans athletes in locker rooms creating problems, right, like there is with coaches actually assaulting. And worse than that, it's like it's victimizing other people. Yeah. And I do want to make clear, like we talked to people who are dressing in those locker rooms at the NCAA final with Leah Thomas and Riley Gaines.

And they say, they told us, multiple sources, told us that Leah Thomas changed behind a towel, facing the other way. And by the way, when you talk to those swimmers, then listen and read what Riley Gaines said immediately afterwards, no one accused Leah Thomas of predation or sexual assault. And so it is merely the rhetoric. This is a story about why has the rhetoric changed and who is funding it and what is it doing to our country? And to me, when I say that the trans sports thing is a moral panic, it's not to dismiss the real debate around the science of competitive advantage. It's to point out that when someone is equating morally, as Riley Gaines has done, unrepentantly, Larry Nassar's assault, sexual assault of dozens upon dozens of female athletes with Riley Gaines' experience, tying for fifth with Leah Thomas, absent any other demonstrable harm, we're living in a batshit dystopia that we don't actually need to if we just use the facts and the quotes and the tax.

forms as our guide to like is this bullshit or not and I hope that we do all right while we're talking about grifters clay Travis did come at you on this mutual friend of ours clay Travis from outkick coverage uh what was that exchange about what where did he fall on this everything that clay has demanded of me falls along the lines of debate me on should men compete in women's sports but the other stuff that we've just spent now minutes 20 minutes almost talking about there is nothing to say about that which i think is the entire also point that i want to make which is it's very easy to win votes when you're creating this boogeyman it's a lot harder when you have to like assess the facts and and i'll just point this out like when you see the

again the timeline in the mortal combat totem pole um clay is on there and he prods riley gains on tape, which we play in the episode, to sharpen the rhetoric. You can almost hear him coaching the rhetoric out of her, like guiding politically this whole conversation to a more winning place. Right. And I think people should know better. Clay should know better. Listeners should know better. Clay does know better. Which is why I pick on him. Okay. You've had a couple other episodes lately that overlap with the political, as mentioned. Phil Mickelson, who I just want to say, you know, all I can judge him on is being a 12-year-old that went to the local golf tournament in Denver and which golfers were nice to me and when I wanted to get signatures and which ones were mean. And Phil was nice.

Phil's nice. He waited around. He likes attention and all that. So I don't know what happened. But Phil has gone full MAGA now. Phil is like off and full Saudi, right? He's not even really full MAGAs make America great again. Phil has gone full Muzga.

um i guess and uh he's off his rockers you've done that people might like that one and also you're being sued by bill belichick's girlfriend so if you just give us yeah just give us like uh the elevator pitch for both of those episodes before we lose you yeah so phil mickleson is a guy who has i think we're talking about gambling in sports a lot recently no one has gambled more on pro sports while being a pro athlete than phil mickleson is that based or not based i don't know where we're out on I think it is based to the point of, I mean, it feels like you're free basing a drug, frankly, that is afflicting a lot of American men these days. And I say that to say that his involvement with naturally a literal, like, oil rig off the coast of Santa Barbara that he has been taunting Gavin Newsom about. There's a 14-inch cock tweet about Trump and there's a lot in that story, but he's basically in a group chat with a bunch of

He was giving Trump a, this is, if you're in the business world, you know about multiples. You know, if you have a, if you have a company and you have a certain revenue, like, you know, sometimes someone's investing in you, they want to give you like a 5x multiple. Or think for on Trump's cock, he was giving him like a 7x multiple, which is, you know, which is something that you want to do if you want to make Trump happen. And the point being there that that enormous inflated cock was to be waived in front of the face of Gavin Newsom such that the regulations would subside and that company. Sable Offshore would become a real winner, another gambling play that would potentially pay off for Phil

Mickelson, the investigation on whether it will, I was just say, humbly continues, but doesn't look great. But Phil, as political and economic actor, is its own, like, politics, sports nightmare. The other one, which I am dealing with, as of today, we're talking on Sunday, and Jordan Hudson, Bill Belichick's, uh, Idea Mill slash Mews, slash momager, slash girlfriend, slash business partner slash everything. More jobs than Marco Rubio. More jobs than us, Tim. Like really, she's out there.

She's grinding. An enterprising young person who is putting us to shame, moving fast and breaking things, as Mark Zuckerberg would say. She has just put on Instagram that she's going to sue me. I have reported, of course, extensive. I don't quite know. I genuinely am continuing my investigation as to like, what did I do this time? But we've had multiple episodes, of course, investigating Belichick, who is the highest paid

employee, public employee in the state of North Carolina, 10 million a year to coach North Carolina who will not make a bowl game as of this past weekend officially, it seems. And Jordan Hudson has decided to wage apparently, or at least threaten to wage legal war against me, which I look forward to covering, I suppose. So there's also just that. My phone is a bad place right now. Yeah. Except it also continues to warm the fire of my dark, dark content-driven heart.

So there's a lot happening. Thanks for just spending a few minutes in the good place with me over here. And good luck coming back to your phone after this. And I will be keeping it posted. Everybody can go watch and listen to your material. I will put the links down here. and Pablo Tori finds out. And it sounds like we'll have more to talk about soon, all right, brother.

As long as I get, I don't know, get like five minutes with my daughter in the next 30 days, I think I'll. Go parent. I'll be back. Go parent right now. Leave that phone right there and go parent right now. There's got to be some sports on, you know, go spend 20 minutes.

A reader a book. Read her a book. How about that? You know what? I took my daughter to the Tulane LSU women's game on Monday. Look at me. So this is me. This is sports dad honoring women's sports and parenting and content.

Not to rub it in your face, Pablo, but that's what's happening over here. I've been reading Phil Mickelson's tweets. Okay, yeah. That's what this dad's been up to. Take a break from that. All right. We'll see you soon, honey. Dichet.

Thank you.