When Rep. Katie Porter tried to dismiss Riley Gaines on HBO’s Real Time, calling the former NCAA swimmer a seeker of “likes and clicks,” the reaction was immediate and telling: Piers Morgan and Bill Maher tore into her weak argument and defended the commonsense position that women’s sports deserve protection. The exchange went viral because it exposed how out-of-touch progressive elites can be when they attack the very women their policies harm.
Morgan bluntly asked Porter to explain what she actually disagreed with, and when she flailed and pointed to sporting bodies as the proper arbiters, both Morgan and Maher pressed her until her talking points fell apart. The look of confusion and the sound of the studio audience made it clear who had the moral high ground in that moment: the defenders of fairness, not the performative politician.
Riley Gaines isn’t some attention-seeking pundit; she’s a collegiate athlete who changed her life plans because she saw what was at stake for future female competitors, and she’s spoken out after facing harassment for doing the right thing. Her experience — including a harrowing protest episode at a California campus — gives her credibility that Porter and other elites simply can’t manufacture.
This episode is emblematic of a larger problem: too many Democrats and media figures reflexively gaslight women who raise concerns about fairness in sex-separated sports, chalking principled objections up to “likes and clicks.” That smears courageous women who are defending basic, biological realities and rewriting the debate to protect ideology over girls.
Credit where it’s due: Bill Maher and Piers Morgan did what many on the right have been demanding for years — they called out the nonsense and defended the integrity of women’s athletics on national television. Morgan even laid out sensible options — compete according to biological sex or create a separate category — while Porter offered little more than sanctimonious hand-wringing. Conservatives should applaud anyone willing to put fairness ahead of woke orthodoxy.
Porter’s inability to make a coherent defense of her stance didn’t play well in public, and it’s no surprise her political fortunes have since faltered amid questions about whether Democrats are out of step with everyday Americans. When voters see elected officials dismiss real threats to girls’ sports, they don’t applaud — they look for leaders who protect their children’s opportunities and safety.
The bigger lesson for conservatives is simple: keep pushing back, keep elevating voices like Riley Gaines, and refuse to let elites gaslight the country into silence. Our daughters deserve fair competition and safe spaces, and anyone who mocks or belittles those concerns is on the wrong side of common sense and biological reality.
This wasn’t just another TV moment; it was a cultural test — and ordinary Americans saw who stood with fairness and who stood with fashionable ideology. It’s time for patriots to keep showing up, calling out the pretense, and defending the simple truth that women’s sports must be preserved for women.
