The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: The Racist Plot to Retire Caitlin Clark from the WNBA

Episode Date: July 1, 2026

Caitlin Clark is single-handedly driving drastic revenue increases for the WNBA. So why are players trying to get her to retire? The jealousy, racial politics, and league mismanagement may be enough to prematurely end Clark’s career if the league can’t get back to what it was created for: basketball. Victor Davis Hanson presents three scenarios that may be the brutal truth.👉Alliance Defending Freedom - Visit JoinADF.com/HANSON or text HANSON to 83848 to give today. Every dollar you give will be DOUBLED thanks to a special matching grant, while funds last.HTTPS://WWW.JOINADF.COM/HANSON.COM  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Daily Signal podcast, where we provide intelligence for the intelligent. Now, without further ado, here's today's take. For 250 years, America has been a bastion of freedom. As we look ahead to the next 250, we're reminded that freedom is ours to defend. Today, Alliance defending freedom stands in courtrooms across the country to protect those freedoms we cherish. life, free speech, religious freedom, parental rights. These freedoms are at the core of who we are as a nation and they must be preserved. ADF is approaching a critical fiscal year-end fundraising deadline.

Your support today helps ADF defend these freedoms so they may endure for many years to come. Every dollar you give will be doubled thanks to a special matching grant while funds last. visit join adf.com slash hanson or text hanson to 83-848 to give today that's join adf.com slash hanson or text hanson to 8348. Hello, this is victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal. I don't watch much women's basketball association games. Apparently most Americans have not in the past. But there was an incident the other day between two teams, the Phoenix Mercury and the Indiana fever.

And the sensation of women's basketball is six feet tall former Iowa College basketball sensation, Caitlin Clark. And here's the rub. She was playing this game, and she was knocked down two or three of three of the Phoenix Mercury team members kind of swarmed her. She almost got a knee in the head. And one player, Alicia Thomas, was sort of resting on her and then took her fist and pressed right onto her juggler vein or throat on her neck.

If that had happened just out in public sphere, if you saw somebody knock somebody down and then sort of rest on top of them and put that on their neck. It would be a felony assault. But this was in a basketball game. And what made it worse was the referees were right there. They not only did not call a flagrant foul. They didn't react to it. It was only when the people who were watching the game got so angry in public opinion

that the league then, I guess, forced the referees to rescind. and they assessed Thomas Fowell, but it was only one day suspension. So what is going on? Well, what's going on, according to the popular press, I'm not sure if I can, I'm qualified to adjudicate that, is that the league is mostly 65 to 70 percent black. It's kind of mere images. It's a completely Ameriocratic League. It mere image is the NBA.

And many of the black players, as true of women's sports, has a higher percentage of lesbians than the normal population. And all of a sudden, this white girl from Iowa, six feet tall, who you might think would be under the basket rebounding in women's basketball. She's kind of lanky, but she turns out to be one of the best outside shooters in the history of women's basketball. So for her first two seasons, she was roughed up a bit, but she took the league by storm, and she continued her historic excellence that came out of college basketball with the University of Iowa team. And she parlayed that into excellent play and kind of skyrocketed the Indiana professional team. But here's the problem. She's for good or evil or happy or sad. She's responsible for many

estimates of a 25% increase in revenue, not to mention millions of people are watching women's basketball because she is such a different type of player, not because of her sexual orientation that is heterosexual, her race, which is white, but because she has a finesse. She's a great passer, and she can shoot from the outside. Now, you would think the league would welcome that and highlight it. But what's happened is attention. has turned to the low attendance prior league to the high attendance, high revenue new league because of Caitlin Clark. Part of it is jealousy, part of it may be race or sexual orientation, but whatever the cause is, the players often are acting against their own self-interest.

They're beating her up. The subtext is that she's lanky and tall and she shoots from the outside, so they're going to rough her up. And the Fox News not long ago listed a series of 10 or more incidents where she had a ruptured ear drum. She was slammed. In the game I'm speaking of, she was knocked down by another player in a flagrant foul. And so it doesn't seem to be, it doesn't seem to make sense. Why are they doing that? Why are the players trying to systematically hurt someone? Now, maybe it's just strategy of bad. that if you intimidate her enough and she goes out on the floor and thinks somebody's not going to be playing normal basketball but try to hurt me, then her shooting will be off. Her

passing will be off. Psychologically, she'll be damaged. And that's happened. Her third year has not been as impressive as her first two. And she's got racked up a series of knee and back injuries. But what's the general public that now has been attracted to this new phenomenon of Caitlin Clark is very angry because what they see is a systematic reverse racism that black women players resent the attention that Caitlin Clark is getting and the new audiences that she's winning and even the new revenue of which they are a beneficiary. And they believe that they're going to play tough physical basketball and injure her. And at least injure her or at least psychologically put terror into her so she doesn't have the same excellence as she had before. That's pretty clear if you look at the list of injuries. Now, what's going to happen? Well, there's only three alternatives.

If you look at the sports commentary, it's divided. The left of center sportswriters, and by the way, sportswriters are among the most left wing of all journalists. I don't know how that's possible. They used to be middle of the road or conservative, but now they are left wing. I think it's because of DEI, and they see sports as a social experiment, sort of. But they fault Clark, and they say, well, she's just too sensitive. She's a whiner. She complains. She looks for injuries that are not there. Or she just has to grow up. This is the big leagues. That kind of stuff.

But not the general public. And not many of the players, they know what's going on. They know what's going on. So, again, what will happen? Well, the first is if the owners of the league, the commissioner, the referees, the players continue this, then she will be permanently disabled, maybe in a year or two, injured. Or she'll be so intimidated that she understands she's not playing basketball, but playing football, or mixed martial arts, and people are going to try to hurt her, and she knows that. And more importantly, she knows that the referees will not enforce it because they are either afraid of the other teams or the management,

or they are afraid of the players. Or they sympathize with the players. Who knows, but they have not been doing their job. And then she will be injured. She will leave the league. People be very angry, and the league will, we send back into obscurity and go broke probably. Because it won't just be neutral.

This great gain and revenue and attention that it's gotten because of Caitlin Clark, if she's gone and forced out and injured, there will be a double reaction. It won't just be that they will lose their new fans. They will lose old fans too. The second is that she just says, why do I have to put up with this?

I know what's going on. They know what's going on. Nobody wants to stop it. It's racism. Pretty clear it's racism. If she were black and perhaps homosexual, she wouldn't have these problems, people say. So there would be some problems

because envy and jealousy is a natural human condition, but there wouldn't be this extent of problems. So she just says, I'm going to leave. I'm going to go to Europe where these problems don't exist to the same degree. And I will have my own career. I'll do very well. And bye-bye. See you, wouldn't want to be you, WNBA.

Or three, and the referees will get together, the management will get together, the coaches will get together, the players will get together, the players will get together. The players will get together and they will say privately, we know what's going on with everybody. We are trying to hurt this woman. Some of us are. And some of us know that others are trying to hurt her. And they're not doing anything. And we've got to stop it. We've got to stop it for financial reasons because it's going to hurt us.

And we're on the verge of becoming mainstream and very, very wealthy and prosperous. And we're going to destroy ourselves. We're going to commit collective suicide. So it has to stop. It's wrong. It's racist. It's sexist and we're not going to do it anymore and we're not going to pick on one particular player and try to injure. Of those three alternatives, she now quits and goes to Europe and saves her career and flourishes.

The league suffers. The league reforms and stops it or she's permanently disabled. I have a feeling it's going to be number one tragically that they're not going to do enough or they're not going to do anything. and someone is going to either punch her in the neck or kick her in the back or knock her flat, and she's going to be permanently injured or so psychologically traumatized that she knows that she can't shoot, she can't pass, and she's going to retire. And I think that is the purpose of a lot of the players doing this. And nobody in this racially charged country can speak explicitly in the truth, but that's the truth. This is Victor Davis-Hansson for the day.

Signal. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at Victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.