The Chris Cuomo Project - Jillian Michaels, Fitness Icon, Talks Trans Athletes and Fairness in Sports

Episode Date: May 21, 2024

On this episode of The Chris Cuomo Project, Chris interviews fitness guru Jillian Michaels. Known for her role on 'The Biggest Loser' and her outspoken views on health and fitness, Jillian shares her controversial stance on transgender women competing in women's sports. In this candid and thought-provoking conversation, she dives into the contentious topics of fairness, inclusion, and the impact on female athletes. Explore her reasons for speaking out, the scientific data behind her arguments, and the personal and professional risks she's taking. Don't miss this eye-opening discussion. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Join Chris Ad-Free On Substack: http://thechriscuomoproject.substack.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jillian Michaels, beautiful, fit, the biggest loser, right? Made it part of our culture. Keeping it real, the podcast, all of these interesting conversations. But guess what? There is now a new big bullet point on her resume. She is taking on the fairness of transgender women athletes competing against non-transgender women athletes. Oh boy, this could wind up being the worst thing that Jillian has ever thought of doing. Why would she do this? Why would somebody who is so dependent or has been on Hollywood culture, on big media culture,

why would she take on a sacred cow like trans rights? She's gonna be called transphobic. She's gonna be seen as advancing the agenda of the far right culture warriors. And yet she is all in. What does that tell you? Well, one of two things. Either Jillian is cuckoo or she knows something

that her opponents do not. I wanted to figure out what it was. Somebody with such a strong brand. Everybody likes Jillian Michaels, right? The worst thing she had going for was that she would actually call out fat people for being fat. But now she is going into very dangerous territory and she hits me with a really good point. Why is it so dangerous? Is it dangerous for the right reasons?

Wow. Little bit of a truth bomb. And this conversation is full of them. I'm Chris Cuomo. Here at the Chris Cuomo Project, we say thank you for subscribing and following. What is fair? Fair to trans people? Fair to non-trans people. That's never discussed. Will be now. And this is one hell of a case from somebody who has no reason to get involved in

this. No good reason. No bad reason in terms of her own brand. It's about a crisis of conscience. Why? Where did it come from? What does Jillian Michaels know that we don't? Take a listen. I've been watching your stuff for a long time and I love what you're promoting as wellness, fitness, as ethos, as culture. My wife does the same thing with her company Purist, that you've made it a lifestyle and you've made it acceptable as that.

And I want you to know I appreciate you for that. Thank you. I appreciate you saying that. And I was surprised that you wound up taking something on that is so controversial when you're supposed to be an ally to the community. And people said to me, why are you talking to this traitor to the community?

How do you respond to that? And why have you decided to speak out about trans athletes? Okay, well, you're absolutely right. I sat on the sidelines of this argument, pun intended, because truthfully you think, you know, someone else will take on this fight. I'm going to punt. Like, let the surely common sense will prevail and they'll find just the right balance of fairness and inclusion and each federation will do their research and they'll figure it out.

And then what ended up happening is, my God, of course I just forgot his name, it's like Miguel Marcona. I've been screaming this guy's name for about two weeks now since he changed Title IX. And he inserted the language of gender identity into sex discrimination. And while the Biden administration didn't specifically rule or put out, I'm sorry, put language in that addresses trans athletes in biological female sports, it sure gives that argument some teeth with a federal regulation that includes gender identity. And my concern, I appreciate inclusion, I think it's critical, but I also think in sports

at a very competitive level, in particular, that a leveled playing field is essential. Otherwise, you're looking at a future without Serena Williams, without Megan Rapinoe, without Ronda Rousey, without Lindsey Vonn. I just can't even imagine what that looks like. We're already losing this entire generation as they're going from would-be champs to activists and litigants. And a whole future of young girls are seeing their dreams of being a gold medalist, being a champion, getting endorsement deals, getting a scholarship positions, become farther and

farther out of reach. And that's just unacceptable. So let's unpack the different levels. The first one is, don't worry, it doesn't happen enough. You're making it sound like this is on every team and every league, and there may be a dozen examples over a few years. This is a boogeyman more than it is a reality.

Well, it certainly isn't playing out that way. And the reality is that just one transgender athlete in a category of sport is kind of all you need to blow hundreds, thousands of biological women out of the water. And you're seeing records being broken every single day across a variety of sports, whether it's powerlifting or it's swimming or it's, or it's track and field. Where does it stop? And now the conversation is shifting towards the Olympics. So all it takes is one to blow out thousands of women in one sport. Why does one blow out thousands? All right. So the science is really where I want to make this argument because if you

don't rely on that, you're far more vulnerable to the transphobic, bigot, right-wing extremist conversation, right? All those labels that people are going to try to slap on you. So let's start with genetics before we even get into androgenization, right? Like sex hormones and what they do to the male and female body. There was a landmark study done pinpointing 6,500 genes that express themselves differently in biological males and biological females. Three thousand of these differences in particular affect physiological traits which will impact sports performance from muscle mass, intensity of muscle contraction, the size of your heart,

your aerobic capacity, your VOJ. It's staggering and that's just from the genetic perspective. And then if you took one study that looked at 85,000 kids as it was an Australian study, kids I believe it was like nine to 17. And if you just look at the nine-year-olds who haven't gone through puberty yet, the nine-year-old boys crushed the women in every single fitness modality. They jumped farther, they jumped higher, they ran longer, they ran faster, they did more push-ups in 30 seconds.

Another Greek study, same thing, looked at six-year-old boys and six-year-old girls and six-year-old boys crushed the six-year-old girls in all the same ways I just mentioned. I looked at 10 other studies that looked at prepubescent children, the boys won every time, and I haven't even gotten into testosterone yet. So when we look at that, right, and we say, okay, well, puberty through, if you're not blocking, that's a whole separate conversation, which I'm sure I'm going to end up getting myself into trouble on next, puberty blockers for children. But presuming that you have athletes who were not on puberty blockers for children, but presuming that you have athletes who were not on puberty

blockers or cross-sex hormones that are deciding to transition in college or late in high school, you now have their entire puberty developing on testosterone. We know that boys in puberty have 15 times higher circulating levels of testosterone than women. There was one study that compared all the databases from all the sporting federations on the best time for female athletes in all sports and male athletes. And the lowest difference they could find is in swimming. And in swimming, the biological males had a 10 to 13% greater advantage. It goes all the way up to field hockey, for example, where the power of their hit with

the field hockey stick is up to 50% greater. So over all those sports, males that have went through puberty without blocking testosterone and going on cross-sex hormones have a 10 to 50% advantage. A 15 year old schoolboy can beat the greatest list elite female athlete in the world in any sport and there are numerous studies to evidence it. So now you got to set that one aside. The next argument we have is, well hold on now, we're gonna do, you know, let's look at, how do you know?

We presume that blocking testosterone and putting individuals on cross-sex hormones is going to level this playing field. But once again, the data says no, overwhelmingly no. There are 19 studies that show us no, and I'll give you two examples. So one, they looked at transgender females, so biological males blocking testosterone and taking cross-sex hormones, muscle size and the thigh. After three years of testosterone suppression, they only experienced a 4% decrease from baseline and still maintained a 13% greater amount of muscle in their thigh than a female taking testosterone than a transgender

male. Same exact thing with grip strength, 17% greater grip strength from a transgender female as opposed to a transgender male. The science is just overwhelming that biological males in any phase of this argument, pre puberty, blocking puberty, ignoring puberty, blockers, win. They have an advantage. It's indisputable. There's an insurmountable amount of data that says so. And now what really alarms me are the conversations where you've got organizations like the ACLU that are saying the binary argument for physiological sex as evidence is a myth. A flat earther would be able to make a better argument right now. It's madness, and we're penalizing women

who are speaking out about this, like April Hutchinson, who was a professional power lifter that watched a transgender athlete blow the record out of the water for total weight lifting over three different lifts, and they suspended her for two years. This is now getting really scary, and that's why I felt honestly obligated

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Check it out. Did you know what you were getting into? Yeah, I did know. But Chris, if we don't speak out, what's going to happen? I'm starting to see so many different things going on in our world that are horrifying to me. And I'm not an expert. I don't have a leg to stand on. I watch you take them on every single day.

But this is my area of expertise. I owned a sports medicine facility. This is what I've done for 30 years. I work with sports scientists and PhDs. I mean, this is what I do. And all of them are experiencing this medical McCarthyism, which they've actually named as medical McCarthyism. They can't speak out. Or they get canceled, shut down, penalized, terrorized. I knew. But if we don't say something, where does it go? And that's what's really frightening for me.

Right, I mean, look, the reason not to get involved is because you're not there yet. There's so few of these people that there are even fewer that have an influence on sports. There are even fewer who are even any good at sports. There are even fewer that have an influence on sports. There are even fewer who are even any good at sports. There are even fewer that are impacting any of the real outcomes. So getting involved to stop it now is doing more harm to them and acceptance of them than it is to the athletic realities.

Well, acceptance of them, I would hope, is inherent, meaning live your life. But be who you want to be, live how you want to live. Nobody should take on bridge with that. However, when the way we live is impacting somebody else's freedoms and somebody else's liberties and somebody else's rights, which is what Title IX was, it provided, literally facilitated the ability for biological females to excel in sports, and now that's compromised. So nobody's going to win here. And I'm sorry, I take that back.

You can't create a situation where everybody can win. And if you're looking after the rights of the few and you compromise the rights of the many, you got a huge problem. And I think we need to start solving for this now as more and more people are coming out as transgender. So it really isn't that insignificant when you're starting to see every single day new records being broken and it's an issue for the Olympics. The Olympics actually commissioned a study, the IOC commissioned a study recently where they compared the athleticism of transgender athletes to biological females.

And the study in anticipation of the Paris Olympics. So now you're talking about gold medals now. And of course, what does that mean professionally? What endorsement deals are out there? Now, a bunch of sports scientists ended up shooting holes in the study because they advertised for participants on social media. The athletes in the study weren't actually participating in competitive sports. They knew what the study was about, so they weren't incentivized to give honest results.

But in addition, the transgender athletes were significantly deconditioned. They had an average body fat percentage of 31.6%, whereas the biological females were 26.6%. They had a significantly deconditioned VO2 max at baseline, whereas the transgender females had a very accelerated level of fitness with their baseline VO2 max. So this would be like saying, I'm going to take a 22-year-old girl who's in great shape and put her up against a 40-year-old guy who's in terrible shape and never works out. She's going to beat him running a 5K running a 10k running a sprint You have to compare apples to apples and that's actually the only study

That has illustrated any advantage for a biological woman over a transgender woman And it was in lower body strength and aerobic capacity as I mentioned There are 19 others that illustrates right exact opposite. Do you remember the sprinter black woman who everybody thought was a man? And this was years ago. And she wound up having a story where, well, I've always been raised as a woman, but she wouldn't answer the question.

I don't remember this. You remember her? Wow, no. Guys, look her up. So she was a sprinter and she was like, came out of nowhere and was blowing everybody away. And people were saying, is she a man? And she was, I was always raised as female,

which was a weird answer, right? Like, you know, if someone asks you, are you female? You say, yes. You know, you don't say, well, I was always raised this way. Or maybe that'll be the answer of the future. Castor Semenea. So she started all this and I was watching it then. And it was clear that people didn't know what to do because it was a one-off. And there wasn't really any culture around it yet. And now there is. So people are going to have to create different standards.

So that then gets us into what the fix was. The fix was, so Biden is getting a lot of heat for this now for supposedly making this new rule for trans people. His administration says no, we only codified what the Supreme Court ruled, which is trans fits under the federal guideline for protection of type. That's all we did. You can't discriminate against it. And they punted, right? But they were going to, they had indicated that they were going to rule on this and that they were going to wipe out any potential for a ban on transgender athletes in biological

female sports, and then they punted, but I mean, arguably because it's an election year. Maybe. Well, and certainly would hurt Biden more than anyone else. I still believe that on the list of priorities for American families, I can't believe how high this is, and this is somebody with two female athletes as kids. But you know, that happens a lot. And I would argue that reproductive rights should have never been a top of the ticket political issue, as it is obviously a woman's issue, but it has been politicized. So there was supposedly a fix.

And the fix was that you have to take these hormones. And it's not legal, it's by federation. It's by sports federation. And like the NCAA came up with its rule, which is you got to be on the hormone stabilizers for over a year or whatever it is, and there has to be a certain monitoring and then it's okay. Why isn't any standard like that sufficient for you? The data doesn't show it. This is where we go back and we look at, right, some of the ones I referenced where after

three years of testosterone suppression, the transgender females still have 13% more muscle in their thigh in this one measurement they took than women on testosterone. They still have 17% greater grip strength after three years of testosterone suppression than women taking testosterone. So transgender males. There's just outside of this one study commissioned by the IOC that has a host of holes in it, the exact opposite is evidenced. And it's like, why this hill to die on, why? Because where the hell is it going?

Because there are so many elements of this that are alarming. And it is the conversation that there's no such thing as physiological sex. I am willing to go down the rabbit hole with you on gender, not personally, but anybody. He was like, it's a social construct. I remember when I had just finished paying

hundreds of thousands of dollars for my younger sister's college education at Sarah Lawrence for her to come home and say that to me. And I was like, ah? And they said to me, about six years ago, and I was like, oh, okay. I'm willing to go along for this ride. A social construct, physiology is not a social construct.

And the problem is that you're seeing this bizarre anti-science stance across pretty much every category of wellness that I touch. So whether it's obesity medicine or it's general health and wellness or it's sports science, this is deeply alarming and it is not fringe. The ACLU is not fringe. And it is not fringe. The ACLU is not fringe. The Biden administration and a federal regulation is just simply not fringe. More frightening to me is the fact that when the female athletes are expressing concern as the primary stakeholders, they're being penalized. Because of course, the bigger argument is what's terrifying all professionals to sit down and shut up in all aspects of culture right now. This is

again my area of expertise so I feel the need to take a stand on it. But when you say like oh you're a bigot and you're a transphobe and you're a right-wing extremist so you're suspended for two years because she said this is insane, this isn't fair, biological males are stronger, period. She's kicked out of the sport. This is the stuff that is beyond alarming. I could get into the other aspects of this with regard to safe spaces, but personally, I don't subscribe. To me, I do think that's an easy fix. Create a different changing room. I'm not going down that rabbit hole.

I think the predator conversation does come off as transphobic. I can't think of an incident where you've heard of a transgender female attacking a biological female. If I'm wrong, please come at me. Go for it. I understand women might feel uncomfortable, but the fix seems simple. No, I'm with you on that. go for it. I understand women might feel uncomfortable but the fix seems simple. No, I'm with you on that.

I mean, the whole bathroom issue that we had established a baseline of certain understandings that people want to believe that trans people are pretenders and this isn't a real thing, so they're phonies. And therefore, creepy guys who are pedophiles will walk into girls' rooms in schools and attack them. And that has literally been demonstrated to be a complete non-thing that you would

have to search, search, search. And then if you're worried about that percentage of risk, then there are a lot of other things we'd have to address first. The second part was a trans kid is the last kid to wanna show you their genitals because they hate the genitals they have. So the idea of what I hear all the time is,

my 12 year old daughter's gotta go in there and see some guy's junk. You know, like that's what they always say, right? And look, I get it from a caveman perspective of wanting to protect your daughter. You don't want her to go in there, even though it's like as if seeing something like that will forever destroy them. Like that's not what they're looking at on TikTok after the day anyway. But that also has been proven to be not how trans people behave.

All right. So let's take those as you've said. Completely with you on that. And that's why I think that is just not an argument that anybody should be making for all the reasons you just mentioned. And I do think it others trans people and I do think it paints them in a horrible light. This isn't personal, this is science.

They have an advantage. And this is why each and every federation needs to do the research and come up with a solution individually. If it's dance and the primary fitness modality you're assessing is technique, great. I think we can end the conversation here, but powerlifting, swimming, sprinting. Do you realize that there was an athlete by the name of Fallon Fox who's an MMA fighter? Right.

And you can say, well, only one. Okay. In the first round, she cracked Tamika Brant's orbital lobe, sent her to the hospital with a concussion and she got seven staples in her head. Right. Really? Like, this is where I'm saying powerlifting, fighting, I mean, you start to get into some safety concerns. Are they numerous? No, they're happening more and more. You had a volleyball player get knocked out unconscious when she got a ball spiked to

her head. You had one women's basketball team in North Carolina need to forfeit because there were so many injuries. Like, you know, You can't just sweep all this under the rug. It doesn't mean you don't accept a trans lifestyle. It means, hey, this is kind of like having a heavyweight fighter fight a welterweight. And then all the other shit that goes along with it, I'm sorry, of not allowing people to speak freely, of coming up with this sort of pseudoscience stance

that there's no such thing as physiological sex. I don't know where that ends, let alone where it goes in this particular issue. Well, one of the interesting, I don't know, I guess it's an irony, is that when I was talking to people about having you on, you have fans in my life. And the consensus was, at first it was like, no, no, no, don't do this because it's only a matter of time

before they whoop her ass for doing this. And I was like, well, she, if someone has to talk about this, Michaels is the right one because she's in the community. Then I got this, which I had always been waiting to happen. My gay, especially male gay, I don't know why there's a difference. We're very blessed to have a very complete palette of humanity around us in the family we've chosen, my wife and I.

But my gay male friends especially are like, whoa, whoa, I don't have anything to do with being trans. Do you understand? I'm a man, or I'm a man. That's all I know is I'm a man. I don't have anything in common with a trans person except I guess there are people who will discriminate against both of us, but don't look at me like I'm going to explain this to you. But then we came around to the thinking, which is why we're talking right now, which is if you were straight, you would be a dead person by now in terms of like, you would have never been allowed to say any of these things and keep all your contracts because they would have come after

to cancel you as some kind of person who's trying to nail down normative values. So how do you process that part in your advocacy? That like, you know, you're gonna get beat up for this. You're gonna get beat up. And I'm sure you're already feeling it, but it would have been worse if you weren't seeing as part of this. If I wasn't there, yeah.

I totally agree with you, which by the way, is another reason I felt the need to say something because there is an element of protection in that I fall under this acronym that I honestly don't even understand. I'm so old school and I have a problem with it. I don't know why straight people don't fall under the acronym. Like what does it mean? Everybody but straight people, which again is a separate show. I find it divisive unto itself. Like, what is it? It's not, it's

like, oh, some of it's gender orientation, some of it is, I can't even figure it out. Nevertheless, I do kind of carry this card in the club. So there's an element of, you can't really call me a homophobe or a transphobe because I've never evidenced it up until now. In fact, quite the opposite. That said, I'm a person that calls it like I see it. And I will never forget, I don't know if you're familiar with the work of Gad Saad, but he wrote this incredible book called The Parasitic Mind, and he basically said, where you're an expert, you have an obligation to say something.

I am an expert in this space. I do also carry a car to the club. And I would also like to point out, everybody is being called a transphobe. How come nobody has an issue with transgender boys playing against biological boys? You know why? Because it's not unfair to the biological males.

And the argument on the other side, and to be honest, I don't see this as a solution, but I understand the other side being people that are against transgender girls in biological girls sports, is they're like, well, there is inclusion. Go play with the boys. And I understand what you're saying, but it lacks a tremendous amount of empathy and understanding, right? Because you also are shutting the conversation down when you don't have empathy and you don't

have understanding and you do go down a rabbit hole in the bathroom debate and it's like, well, go play with the boys. You're not trying to other anyone, and that is insensitive and it lacks understanding, and you shut the conversation down from there. So for me, I do factor that in. I'm like, all right, you know, I would hope that in the 50 years I've been alive, 33 of them had obviously I've been gay, knowing that I was gay and I've never evidenced transphobia or homophobia. So other than by the way, sorry, I have to correct

that prior to discovering I was gay, I was very homophobic, not about trans people because I was gay. So in sort of trying to fend off what was inevitable, I was like, this is gross, this is terrible, until I ended up faring out, oh, okay, this is what's going on with me. But it's not, in other words, it's not the same thing that we're talking about. And my hope is that being able to point out a playing field that is not equal does not allow others to label you transphobic, bigoted, and so on. But I just don't, I don't care anymore. I just don't. So what are we supposed to do? Are we supposed to wait for there to be enough trans females

that they can compete amongst themselves and they don't get to compete until then or is it worth allowing the inclusion even if there's some lopsided results in the interest of allowing the kids to assimilate? I tried to look for answers on this and ultimately what I have found is that each federation for each sport needs to look at the research. So especially by the way, in sports that are elite where an athlete wins by the smallest margin,

a fraction of a second to cross a finish line, right? You have to look at what is the percentage of advantage and what fitness modality, are there enough trans athletes to create a third category of advantage? In what fitness modality are there enough trans athletes to create a third category of sport? Is there a handicap that maybe you impose regarding strength percentage? It's like, okay, we've illustrated an average of 17% greater grip strength, which is an indicator of overall strength. Therefore, there should be a handicap of 17 percent. Weight lifted gets to each federation and the actress in the sport need to do the research, need to allow the conversation to exist, and they

need to apply it with common sense. We need to inject some common sense here. Nobody's going to do that because they're all going to wind up ruling against the trans athletes. They haven't yet. They have not yet. There were bans proposed and some federations are, but most aren't, especially not with this federal regulation. Right. But that's why they're not though. They're not because they put in a standard that they've agreed is enough even though the results are showing it's not enough that they've agreed is enough, even though the results are showing it's not enough. And they don't want to go farther than that because all of those same entities, cultures,

dynamics are policed by people who are in favor of the inclusion. Even if it's about erring on one side, they would rather err on the side of the inclusion. That's why it stayed the way it is. You know, sometimes if you just change the scenario, you see the principle very clearly. For instance, off topic but related, what's happening on campus right now, you replace the Jews with transgender people and none of those encampments would be allowed on campus. Or black people. If it was, hey we're here because we don't want trans athletes on the track team, you're not getting to build a village.

You're getting, somebody's gonna come up to you and say, hey you know that we have a policy and a guideline against what you're saying right now, right? Yeah, I'm saying it anyway, because it's free speech, and this is, let's say it's a public university, so you don't even have the private thing. Yeah, okay, we're throwing you out. Why? Because we don't allow that kind of-

Fake speech. Yeah, we don't allow that here. You change the Jews with trans, why? The Jews don't have a protective bubble around them the way trans people do, the way the LGBTQ plus, you know, community does. And you're asking the same people who want the inclusion to limit the inclusion. I'm simply asking for common sense to prevail. And if there is any discrepancy on what outcome common sense brings you to, there is an overwhelming body of data that evidences it.

Do you have trans if you just deal with it on common sense? In sports? No. No. Not in competitive sports at an elite level. I mean, maybe dance. There's just nothing, nothing, not golf, not field hockey. Look at you saying that dancers aren't athletic. We've both watched Alvin Ailey Theater.

No, no. Some of the best athletes in the world. No, the reason I say dance is specific actually. I have friends who are very far right and I have friends who are very far left. So depending on the issue, I go to a group of friends in particular as a sounding board. So one of my friends, I argued this all the way through with her and I was like blow holes in the argument for me. And she's like, well, I'm a dancer and in dance men and women have always competed against each other.

And I was like, okay, well, what is it judged on? She said technique and I was like, great, I'll put that in the no band category. So this is why if I'm missing something, each federation would weigh in here. I would go advanced because if you look at Alvin Ailey, right, ballet has always been female centered, right? Why? Because of technique, because of grace,

because of delicacy, until Alvin Ailey. And then he put raw athleticism into it in addition to those other things. And then you had a male-dominated theater culture. Of course, they have females also. But it's like they are so phenomenal as a spectacle to watch because of the grace technique and this power that these guys have.

Now you're blowing holes in that. And my point being that you're pointing out that a male advantage is a male advantage. It's a real advantage. In pretty much anything physical. Yeah. So, and this is where you have to say, all right, each federation needs to do the honest research

and determine what are you gauging a win on. They're all geared towards inclusion. They're all trying to make it easier for this to happen, not harder. But this is my point. What is the overriding principle? Because historically, it's been a level playing field. So, yes, you've got two things in direct opposition. You're not going to win on both sides.

Both goals cannot be met at this point in history. But none of the rules, the reason we created Title IX was because, and by the way, you know, we're still not doing what we're supposed to do when it comes to allowing girls to have the same opportunities that boys do. Maybe Caitlin Clark is going to move the needle now in terms of how we see, you got to get asses in seats, otherwise sports is never going to be good. Exactly. That's the other argument. It's like women bitch about equal pay, but they're not buying tickets.

Right. So go buy some tickets, right? Help them jerry. So that needle may move a little bit, but fundamentally, what does the game lack? It lacks the explosive athleticism that you get on the male side. There's a little bit of a culture bias that we're used to watching males do certain things, but that's changing. But here's the point.

We separated them for a reason. Okay? And again, as a girl dad, I have a son too, but as a girl dad, I've always been telling you can do whatever you can. I don't have them fight. You know, I'm a big self-defense guy. You know, I teach, I fight. I don't have my girls preparing to go fight with boys. You know, I don't want them, you know, I'm a big self-defense guy. You know, I teach, I fight. I don't have my girls preparing to go fight with boys.

You know, I don't wanna do that. They're gonna get hurt. So you are asking for them to undo what they have always been geared to do, which is to curate equal opportunities for very different types of human beings, which is, you know, I'm older than you, but we're in the same generation.

You are in much better shape than me. You don't wanna fight me, okay? I don't wanna be in a pushup contest with you, and you don't wanna fight me. Because we have different physiological traits. You're asking to undo that and make accommodations where one can be with the other, because that's what people don't want to say.

When is a transgender female not able to compete? When she's really a guy. That's when. It's like when we had the pregnant transgender man. Remember that? The mom with the beard. Yes. And I said on GMA at the time, unaware of how stupid what I was saying was,

they were like, well, this is a real riddle of science. That's how it was pitched. When is a male able to start having babies? Is this going to be a new thing? And I was like, it's a guy. It's a guy. It still has a uterus and a vagina. And that's why the person's having a baby. And I remember the people on the couch with me on GMA looking at me like,

oh, here we go. And sure enough, I got crushed. And this was 15 years ago or something like that. Like, it wasn't even a thing yet. And there was resistance then to me saying that this transgender male was able to be pregnant because they still had female sex organs. So you are asking for these cultures to do something that they are designed to do the opposite of. They want this to be okay.

But it's not. And we have to speak truth to power because the consequences are too great. And over time, the consequences become exponential. And we can't sit idly by because ultimately, everybody who's on the sidelines, the revolution is going to come for you too. You know, you're starting to see, I'm seeing like all of these young kids and again, this is not my area of expertise. Like I have no idea what I'm talking about and anything political, but all of these young kids who are now like Obama is the devil and genocide Joe. And I'm thinking, wow, I mean, this is the far left. I would have thought it would have put these guys on a pedestal and now they're coming for you. How does that feel?

You and all of your woke politics have begun your own downfall. So ultimately, everybody who's playing it safe on the sidelines, the revolution is coming for you too at some point. And this is where you don't have a choice. If you play this all the way out to the end, you will be impacted by this. It will be your kids. It will be you. It will be some member of your family. I am not, again, I'm not unsympathetic. I think there are hopefully different fixes out there. Some that we've discussed, maybe a third category where there are enough athletes or

That's not the way it's going. That's the way reason would take it, but that is not the way rationale of the policy is going. You and I are in a similar situation. Depending on state, or your kids and my kid, I have an older one than you. You have a couple of teenagers, right? 12 and 14. All right, so I have 14, 18, and 12.

I'm at the age now when I have to think, I have to squeeze my eyes. That happened, by the way. You're two years away from that, by the way. Two years from now, whenever you're thinking hard about something, you're gonna look like this. Just so you know, get ready for that. So, if my 14 year old, Carolina, who we call Cha-Cha, came home and said, I'm Thomas.

Okay, gotta deal with it. Bring in the therapist, let's figure out why we're going Thomas. If she says, and I want gender reassignment surgery, now let's deal with household by household. The Cuomo household, therapist comes in, we figure it out because it's not happening. So we're figure it out, because it's not happening. So we're gonna figure it out because that's not happening.

Why? Because you're a kid, that's why. I wouldn't let you get a tattoo. Legally, you can't till you're 18. I'm not letting you decide to be a different gender. That statement is getting close to being heretical. And based on the state, New York state where I am, they're making more progressive laws all the time that I don't get to tell my kid that it's the legal equivalent

of her coming home with blood spurting out of her arm and her saying, I need medical treatment. So what happens in your household if the 14-year-old comes home and doesn't say, I'm gay, whoever thought with the experience that you've come through that we would be praying for gay. I pray for gay. Because look, it's still hard as we both know,

and you've lived, depending on where you live, you know, we get a little bit of like the Jews believing that America is the same for them as it is for everybody else. That being gay in certain places is different than being gay in different places. And I would worry about my kid and how they're gonna be accepted and all those things,

but not like I used to be. Now I'd be like, oh, Mario, you're gay, beautiful. Well, where is he? You know what I mean? This is great. Trans is the new like, oh shit, what do I do for this kid? How concerned are you as parents that who's running against your daughter in the next track meet

is the least of your problems? It's what if she comes home and says, I'm really Franklin. Okay, this is something actually that I've been learning a lot about. I've been following the work of Abigail Shrier. I've been following Michael Schellenberger's work. I don't know if you read the WPATH files where there's a whole expose about what's behind

this movement, what role Big Pharma is playing. All this narrative is getting out there. The fact that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones are not reversible, they're doing irreparable damage, and it's actually quite terrifying. This is almost a billion dollar business right now, by the way, putting children on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. Enter Big Pharma, who's got a massive lobby.

Big Pharma, why do you think the laws are changing? And culture. That would be the end. And culture. And you are in literally la-la land now, because it's the big name folks like you, whose kids are coming out as trans younger and younger and getting the treatment that is making it culturally understood and acceptable to some degree. My answer to my children would be, I love you, I support you.

My daughter, if you want to live like a boy, you can live like a boy. You explore this. To my son, if you want to live like a girl for a while, you live like a girl for a while. You explore this. I would also simultaneously consult a therapist, but here's what's even scarier, and I won't name names here, but there are a host of psychoanalysts that I, all I do all day long is interview PhDs and MDs. I've had many on my podcast talking about a host of different issues with mental health,

and I asked one of them, I was like, what would you do? Because based on the work of Abigail Shrier, transgender is something that usually affects only boys. It's a very small percentage of the population. It presents itself at three years old. And now you've got 12 year old girls, 13 year old girls in greater numbers

saying they're trans, wanting to chop off their breasts, and she's making the case that there's a host of psychological issues happening that aren't being addressed and she's explaining how the research shows that saying you're trans kind of fills this void for them. Would you address it? And the answer was no. And it comes back to the medical McCarthyism. It's like, nobody in my institute would do it. You would be banished. You would be shunned. You might refer. Oh, you know, let me refer you. This isn't what I do. It's this is this is why it's more important than ever that you speak up where you know you're educated and able and you show people like, hey, look, I survived it, kind of jump in because there's strength in

numbers. So I think that that issue unto itself needs to be psychologically addressed. And it's not to say it isn't real. I obviously know it's real, but I think not for every single kid that's exploring it. I would indulge their ability to explore it. I would get some help in the meantime for them to explore it with a professional. I would never under any circumstance facilitate a transition on puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones or surgical reassignment because it is irreversible.

And anybody who tells you it isn't is a liar, and the data is all out there. And I would say when you're an adult and your body has fully formed, then you can obviously make this decision for yourself. Your state may have a law that may have you surrender custody of your kid if you resist it, by the way. That's why we moved to Florida. I only go in and out of California for transitory purposes if I have work there, or family issues. I still have my mom, my brother, my kids still have to go back and forth.

So that's just one of the reasons. You know it was a tax play. A tax play. There's that. A tax for a P&G. I'll be four out of the Trans Card. You know what you did. Here would be my argument.

My business partner left California over a decade ago for the tax play, and I didn't. And I left in 2021 because things just got so insane and crazy here. And this is only one example of what I'm talking about. And I do find California to be passing legislation that I think is utterly unhinged. Again, not a politician, not an expert in any of this stuff,

but it's the laws you're talking about that I am absolutely horrified by. And I think arguably the next conversation, here's what else is alarming, forgive me, is that the right side of the aisle is talking about this. They have experts on that are showing the corruption with big pharma and how they're co-opting human rights groups via donations like WPATH, HRC, to give medical institutions a health equity and inclusion score. And if they don't do gender affirming care, they get a bad score.

So now they're like a transphobic, not LGBTQ friendly facility. It's insane what's happening here. And there are people like Schellenberger and Abigail Schlier who are exposing all of this that are incredible journalists that have done the work. But it's essentially, it's actually outright terrifying. Schlier who are exposing all of this that are incredible journalists that have done the work. But it's essentially, it's actually outright terrifying.

And I think you've got to safeguard yourself by, steel man yourself, safeguard yourself by doing the work, having the research in front of you. So you can say no, because they're telling parents, if you don't do it, your kid's going to kill themselves. And the reality is that you have more suicide in the population of children that have transitioned versus the population that hasn't. Support for the Chris Cuomo project comes from Done With Debt. Let me tell you, we're all dealing with it, especially in American culture, right?

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The problem with the write-on it is, as with reproductive rights, they're making a boogie man out of it to play to advantage. And that winds up creating the real problem, which is that trans is bad. The same way that a woman who wants to exercise her reproductive rights is a murderer. They're just doing it to play to advantage against the other side because we are in a binary battle to the bottom when it comes to politics where these two parties are always in search of what makes the other side worse. Yeah. And they used to do the same thing with being gay. I mean that's

why you're such an important figure and people like Bill Maher are such an important figure because you guys can speak truth to both sides of the aisle, but very few can, and the left isn't covering it. And that's a problem. And this is how you end up a right-wing extremist because it's like, oh, do you want to do Newsmax? We did a detransitioning special because people do detransition.

And I'll never forget, a buddy of mine did a movie called I, Carla. Carl and the A was in parentheses. And it was about a guy who became a trans female. And it was the first time in a movie where the trans female was a trans female. And that's who did it. She became an actor and she played this role

of the guy, Carl, who became Carla. And I was talking to her about this. And she was with, you know, another thing that plays to a stereotype here, which of course nobody will ever acknowledge. But in Southeast Asia, you know, there's a whole subculture of- Ladyboys.

Of ladyboys. So, but you know, we don't talk about it. And so she was with this Filipino or Thai gorgeous trans woman. I mean, this woman just is almost the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life. I've seen those women and it's like mind blowing. Yeah, you aspire to be so good-looking. Phenomenal. So she says to me, I say, regrets. She said, no, this is my truth. She says, but I do recognize I'm very damaged and I had a damaged upbringing. And I don't know what that played in my decision, but I do know this. Anybody who wants to do this should not do it till they're an an adult because it's very expensive,

it's very painful, and not, and she said this to me years ago. She said, not everybody who does this finds what they were looking for. And then they're super fucked. And so then many years later, this guy brings me this story about people who have de-transitioned and how pissed off they are at people who they believe forced them to transition in the first place. So we do the special.

It's pretty middle of the road, the way a lot of incipient journalism is, was pretty much just showing the obvious, just people who had lived it. You know, it's not like I had you on saying people should de-transition. It was like, no, I de-transitioned, and here's why I did it.

And here's how I feel. So the beating that I took was a very interesting beating. I'm at that point now, lucky for you, you're not. A beating is a beating and you're like, oh my God, I'm taking a beating. To me, I now just- There's different beatings. I just take beatings-

Different classifications of beatings? I'm just interested in like how they're hitting me. You know what I mean? It's like, I'm going to take a beating. What kinds of blows are these that I'm taking? And it was people, I'm coming out of Mass, the little one was going through confirmation, the Catholic thing. And the people were like, good for you.

Good for you. And I didn't even know what they were talking about because for you, good for you. And I didn't even know what they were talking about because I'm so used to having anybody who's Christian say anything nice to me. And then the left was like, why are you trying to make trans a bad thing? Which had never entered my mind. What I thought I was doing was,

hey, make sure this is right for you. This is really what it is. Never thought you could reprobably change your body. Yes. And I realized, oh, okay, this is a political football now. So that's what you're up against. The reason it doesn't make sense that you're looking at all this data and it's like, well, what do you think's going to happen if we're in a bench press competition?

Now you'll find a woman here and there who can bench press 350 pounds even though she's only 140 pounds. You'll find them. I don't know what they're on, but you'll find them. But that's not the baseline of competition that you're going to find in most college sports. And she no longer holds the record by the way, transgender athlete holds the record for that. And that's why you don't have a lot of female football players playing for Notre Dame. You know,

there are some realities, but it's a political football and the principle is not lined up with the practical. It's about what they want. It's what they want to happen. But Chris, then what do you do? You just give up, right? You just, you just, what? And you just allow this madness to prevail? If, if we don't stand up and say no, where does it stop? You would need trans athletes. You would need trans female athletes, elite ones, because a lot of them suck, right? I mean, I can tell you that from watching my own kids' games. They sucked competing against men, that's for sure.

You see that they had alpha trinkets. They lose out fast. Just like that powerlifter, just like the swimmer, just like the track and field athlete, and then they're champions amongst biological women. Yes, but you'd need them to say, it's not fair. We should have our own thing. We don't want to compete against these other women. But of course they're not going to say that because they inherently have the advantage.

Who would give that up? And maybe there aren't enough athletes in that category. But you're actually talking about prize money, endorsement deals. It's a career. This is what I'm trying to say. Serena Williams told David Letterman, Andy Rarkey keeps trying to play me in tennis. Go away Andy. And he said why?

And she said, because he will beat me 6-0, 6-0, in under 10 minutes and I'm not interested in being humiliated. I like women's tennis, men's tennis is a different sport. So you got a world with no Serena Williams, because if there was one of those male tennis players who's ranked 6,000 would crush the number one female athlete in the sport. I don't care who's got to say it. If the trans athlete doesn't say it, does that mean we don't say it? Does that mean we don't tell the truth? Because the alternative is a world with no

Sharina Williams. And I don't want that world. It's a world where young girls don't get to dream that big because it will be insurmountable if one trans athlete enters for sport and trains in an equivalent fashion. That's a problem. I think it is a problem. I think it's a problem that I was worried about giving you a platform to discuss this because I like you and I didn't want to be part of what winds up getting you in trouble. Have you paid any price for this yet?

Oh, I've paid so many prices. I've been canceled so many times. I was already canceled in first. Oh my God. What happened in the good old days when you just used to call people fat? Oh my God. I was with you back then too, by the way. Oh my god, I was with you back then too by the way. Oh my god, Chris, when I used to do the Today Show

and talk about how to get your shoulders ready for summer. It's like, what is happening? Now I'm having it exposed, like the role Big Pharma is playing in gender affirming care and the dangers of GLP-1 memetics and treating obesity. It's just like, it's madness. It's absolute madness. But I don't, I just don't feel like I can get to the end of my life and be proud of

myself and I have sat on the sidelines throughout some of these past couple of years and my kids keep saying to me, Mom, are you going to say something? Like, are you, are you going to say something? Like, are you going to say something about this? And at the end of the day, I just want to look back and say, I did the right thing. I did what I believed was right. I don't need my money. I'm fine.

I could pay my bills, you know? How much money does a person need to compromise their values? At some point, I want to be able to look back and say, I left a legacy. I told the truth. I fought the good fights. If it was about the money, trust me, I'd be selling Ozempic through JillianMichaels.com, like Weight Watchers and Noom and all the others. I have enough money. I just want to try to do the right thing and look back and be proud about the way I lived my life and pursued my career. Well, you have a similar dynamic, very different things,

but you're going to have women who have their lives changed because of what happens in elite competitions if they're up against people who are superior to them outside their own control. And there is no way that you can get shot up with this Ozempic and all these drugs and nothing bad is gonna happen to anybody down the road. That goes way beyond the percentage of risk

that there is with whatever you put in your body. It can't be that these people are dropping all this weight so fast and we're not going to see any complications from it that are meaningful. It can't be. Can't be. You have significant meaningful complications that are playing out in real time. A lot of them are on the box. That's the best part is, you know,

you have the doctors that are paid by Novo, and she's not an MD. I'm thinking, do you believe that I don't talk to MDs? I talk to MDs with more integrity than you. That, by the way, are quietly, I had one gastroenterologist write me the other day, who's again, name I won't mention unless she chooses to speak for herself.

She's like, I was really proud of you on more. She's like, you said it as well as any doctor could have. I go, well, it's true, it'd be nice if more of you guys. Who would say it? She's like, yeah, I call it medical McCarthyism. She goes, do you realize that we have had to rewrite the guidelines for surgery because of Osepix? She goes, the last time I saw this was with the opioid crisis.

And what did we do? We created more drugs to treat that problem only in America. And I go, that's so funny. I was like, Dr. William Lee said that this reminds him of the opioid crisis, the fallout from this. And it's just, if people could simply take some self-agency and use their common sense, but when you're telling them things like you have a medical disease,

which is absolutely not true, and the origin of that started in 2013. So the American Medical Association had their kind of annual meeting with their housekeeping and on the docket was whether or not to vote on obesity being a disease, yes or no. They put together their own panel of experts to weigh in and their own panel said no. And they gave several really important reasons. Number one, you can be bigger and not have illness. Number two, this is an adaptation, meaning there's a positive correlation

between a more sedentary lifestyle and foods that have more calories in them. So the body is adapting to not moving as much and to taking in more energy by storing that energy as fat. It's an adaptation. While obesity results in disease unto itself, it is not a disease. They voted for it anyway.

They still determined it was a disease because you could charge more in a visit with Medicare, you could charge for all the devices, you could charge for all the drugs. I'm not one to try to allow big insurance to not pay for things. I would love to see people get all the coverage they can get for anything and everything. But when you call up the narrative and you say you're fundamentally diseased, therefore the only way out of this is our drug. You had a problem and you're telling me that 75% of American adults have a disease that didn't exist in 1950, 1960, 1970 and has subsequently more than doubled since 1980?

And the warnings on the box are bananas, pancreatitis, thyroid cancer, gallbladder disease, vision loss. We already know that there's extraordinary muscle loss via the Daxus bands. And Mark Hyman was just saying that your chances of getting pancreatitis while on these drugs increased by 900%. Your chances of intestinal blockage, 450%. There are class action lawsuits now because the drug is causing self-paralysis in some people and you plateau on it. That's the craziest part, is that it's not a solution. It stops working within 68 to 72 weeks.

You can never get off of it because all the meta-analysis shows you gained all the weight back and then some. And if you speak out against this one, you're now not a fat-shamer because when you say obesity kills people, that's against the big food narrative of no, no, no, you're healthy in any size, you're a fat shamer, right?

So if you, when you say this, like, oh, don't take these drugs. Now you are shaming people for taking the drugs because obesity kills people. It's insane. So that all I can do is just give people the facts and say, have no judgment on what you do with them. These are the facts. Do your own homework on it. That's all you can do.

Crazy. And you'll lose eight out of 10 times to easy. You will lose to easy eight times out of 10. I've seen it in my own life. I've seen it with people who are in shape, who want an edge. You know, some of the most reckless among us are the people who are in the best shape because they want the advantage.

And they're so addicted to gains that I know a lot of people, I know a lot of people in your world that take it to get- They're taking ozendip? That take it to get ready for things. Drop a quick 10. Oh, like a-

Drop a quick 15. It used to be that they would have someone teach them how to dehydrate before a shoot or before something like that, that thin the skin. Yep. And, you know, it's funny, Hyman is a friend of mine, Schellenberger is a friend of mine. And you know, I work with them on different things. And again, my wife has this business called Purist, you know, that is very, is wellness, wellness is culture, you know, it's as ethos.

So it's like every decision she makes is somehow a function of, you know, of beneficial thinking. So it's not just like food and exercise. And you know, she'll, she's big into supplementation and stuff like that. And I always say to people, you know, eat less, move more, you know? Eat less, move more. And now, maybe it's because I'm older,

but pretty much everybody who comments on something about me that's not about something that I'm saying, ask me what I'm on. Doing trend? You're on testosterone, right? I think you're a taking two. And by the way, I had no idea how many people have low testosterone. I don't have any problem with people being on testosterone to get themselves to a healthy

level. I mean, if they say your level's low, all right. You got to do this with the right doctor though. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. They need the right doctor. But everybody asks me, what are you on? What are you on? Because they believe they're a needle away. Because we've gotten past it. For me, it would be like a needle. I'm out. You know what I

mean? Like, I'm too afraid of needles. I'm old enough to still worry that anytime you have a needle, you're going to get AIDS. So I'm out. Gosh, right. Of course. Now people are past the pills, they'll do needles. They'll do needles. They have no problem. What do you want?

That's what they'll say. That's so sad. But they wouldn't just defer to the common sense first. And it's the same thing that you're battling on the topic of our discussion today, which is it's easier for them to allow trans women to compete. It's easier. It forwards the agenda of assimilation, of equality, of acceptance. And if it's harder on the other athletes, well, let's wait until it's overwhelming

before we see it as anything other than bias. Still wouldn't be on the right side of history. Period. And I still think that even though you might lose eight out of 10, if you can grab two out of 10, if I can grab one out of a hundred, I'll take it. The reality is for me personally, this is not my life. In other words, I'm not a pro athlete. I'm not the person taking ozempic.

In fact, I lose money by engaging in telling people not to take ozempic or raising the red flag about fairness with transgender athletes. But I just think if you could put a drop in the right bucket. I will live in a clean conscience Chris, that's it. I hope that if I give people the information they'll do more homework. Am I always right? No, sometimes the data changes but usually I don't put information in the world unless it's been vetted by MDs, by PhDs, that I can make a strong case and steel man myself for the argument.

No matter what someone's going to come at me with, oh, you're transphobic. How? It's not fair. These are the facts. You can call it what you want. And here's the thing. I saw a statistic that only 17% of the American population actually supports this. So you've got 83% that are like, yeah, this is crazy.

Man, they're like that about most things these days, though. People just stay out of it because this whole world of policy and politics and media is remote. You know, that's why the fastest growing part of our electorate are people who are nonpartisan, over 40% of the population now. We get an exaggerated sense because we're forward-facing in media that this is how everybody's thinking about these things. And it isn't.

That's probably the best thing you have going for you is that you're probably a voice for the majority. So I appreciate you making the case. Anything I can do to help with what you're about. I'm a fan and I believe that you're fighting the good fight. Well, it's absolutely mutual and I cannot thank you enough for having me on and we need voices like yours that are reasonable to be able to get the message out to both sides so it's not partisan. And I've been a fan of yours for years and I'm just so grateful to finally get a chance to do this podcast with you

I'm always a call away. Thank you very much for spending the time with me and I wish you well you and the family Thank you. And hello to your wife. I hope I get to meet her I gotta tell you she does have data. But is this really about data? I don't know. I don't think it is. I think it's about the politics of inclusion. And I think it's about people who have developed an intolerance for anybody who doesn't like what they like when it comes to their politics and their social policies.

And yet, Michaels is doing what she's always done. Put her head down and gone right into the challenge. And I have to tell you, I think she is fighting the right fight. Now, should it come out the way she wants or should it be seen the way she wants it to be seen? That's for you and that's for others to decide. But it was a conversation that I was happy to have

and I liked all the tangents it took also. I was a fan of hers coming into it, more a fan of hers now. Not necessarily because of what these issues mean to me or what they mean to her, but because of what's motivating her. It's refreshing for me to see that somebody who wants to motivate others is actually living the way she asks the rest of us to, which is to try to live your own truth and to try to give your all to what you say matters. Now on that note, I

thank you for listening and for watching. I wish you'd subscribe. You know, only one and five of you do. Oh, we love the podcast. Thank you so much. How am I supposed to pay? I got a whole team here. It ain't cheap making Greg out my friend. Let me tell you. So if you like what we're doing, subscribe. You can get it ad free. I mean, that's always been the dream is that I don't have to rely on anybody else except you to pay the bills and keep this thing going.

I love doing the Chris Cuomo project. I wouldn't be able to have these conversations anywhere else. So go to Substack, subscribe at the podcast, and you get it ad free. You'll get all my long COVID stuff. You'll get to get all my doctor's understanding of what's going on and what to do about it when it comes to long COVID,

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Let's get after it.