Retired U.S. soccer star Megan Rapinoe has two Olympic medals to go along with her two Women’s World Cup titles with the U.S. Women’s National Team (USWNT). She was also part of the team that infamously lost 5-2 to an under-15 boys team in a 2017 scrimmage, so she has seen firsthand what the biological differences between men and women mean for sports.
Yet having already made her millions and retired, Rapinoe is now a vocal advocate for so-called ‘trans’ athletes (i.e. biological men) competing in women’s sports. Her latest hypocrisy came late last week when she called out the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for its new policy designed to protect female athletes.
On Monday’s show, Megyn was joined by Emily Jashinsky, host of MK Media’s After Party, to discuss Rapinoe’s latest inane commentary and why she is increasingly irrelevant.
The IOC Policy
Late last month, the IOC announced its official new policy prohibiting men from competing in women’s sports. The rule is clear: “For all disciplines on the Sports Program of an IOC Event, including individual and team sports, eligibility for any Female Category is limited to Biological Females.”
Eligibility to compete as a female athlete in the Olympics will now be determined by genetic testing – specifically, SRY gene screening – through saliva, cheek swab, or a blood sample, and the organization said athletes will only need to be screened once in their lifetime.
IOC President Kirsty Coventry, herself a two-time Olympic gold medalist in swimming for her native Zimbabwe, explained the new rule as a “protection of the female category” that is “based on science” and “led by medical experts” with “the best interests of athletes at its heart.”
Rapinoe’s Response
But Rapinoe apparently thinks she knows better. During the latest episode of her A Touch More podcast, she dismissed the notion that the policy was rooted in science and claiming the IOC was subjecting women to “invasive testing.”
“Unfortunately, we have to say that all in the same breath as a really horrible rule came out from the International Olympic Committee,” Rapinoe said alongside her partner, former WNBA player Sue Bird. “They announced a new policy that they’re calling, I can’t even believe that they’re calling it this because it has nothing to do with protecting women, I feel like two people, who played at the very highest level for every competition that you possibly could, don’t agree with this and never felt like this was an issue at all, ‘The Protection of the Female [Women’s] Category.’”
According to Rapinoe, biology is not black and white. “We already know that biology, as much as we want it to be just nice and clean and tight and perfectly in one category and another, it’s not,” she suggested.
That is why she has an issue with the policy. “This committee is framing it as based in science, which it’s not,” Rapinoe claimed. “This will ultimately just prevent people from competing within the women’s category that they feel like they have an unfair advantage.”
Rapinoe accused the rule of being a “hateful” capitulation to President Donald Trump. “It’s just really hateful. There’s been so few athletes that are trans or competing as trans and it’s so blatant on its face,” she asserted. “It’s a total acquiescence to the Trump administration and to really right-wing conservative politics that really is just bringing down so much hate against such a small percentage of people who are just trying to live their life. It’s just horrible and I’m just sickened by it, really.”
The Hypocrisy
A stunning August 2024 report from the U.N. General Assembly found that over 600 female athletes in more than 400 competitions have lost more than 890 medals in 29 different sports as a result of allowing males who identify as women to compete in female sports categories.
As it relates to the Olympics specifically, only three so-called ‘top-tier’ sports – track and field, swimming and cycling – had a ban on males who identified as females and had also gone through male puberty competing in the women’s category prior to the 2024 Paris games.
The issue came to a head in female boxing during those Olympics when Lin Yu Ting of Taiwan and Imane Khelif of Algeria won gold in female categories after having previously been ruled ineligible to compete as women by the International Boxing Association.
And yet Rapinoe seems to be suggesting the women who have seen their opportunities stolen by male athletes should take it on the chin. “It’s because it just only happens to such a small group of girls that they should just suck it up and suffer. They should lose their gold medals, they should take the beating in the face by a man in the boxing ring and quit all the whining like me, Megan Rapinoe, sitting with my millions and my endorsements having made it to the top,” Megyn quipped. “You can hear the sound of the ladder being pulled up.”
Jashinsky called Rapinoe’s position “infuriating” in part because it has lacked consistent reasoning. “It is such an egregious moving of the goal posts,” she noted. “The line was, ‘It’s fine, it’s not a real advantage.’ And now the line is, ‘Oh, it might be a real advantage, but you’re still going to have to put up with it… Don’t worry about it. It’s just a couple of people.'”
Megyn said Rapinoe should have to make that argument to the high school field hockey player in Lowell, Massachusetts, who had her teeth knocked out after getting hit by a shot from a ‘trans’ player in 2023. In Jashinsky’s view, that anecdote alone negates the soccer star’s entire argument. “Your story is a great one because that’s one boy. That’s all it took – a swing from one boy,” she said. “Her point is irrelevant.”
Also irrelevant? Rapinoe herself. “[Her] making this argument… now, does it still bother me because it’s wrong and it will still probably affect girls in blue states that have to put up with it? Yes, absolutely. It still bothers me,” Jashinsky said. “[But] Megan Rapinoe is so much less of a threat now in [2026] than she was in 2019… Like, you pushed this, it worked on the institutions for a couple of years, and then everybody got wise to it.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Jashinsky by tuning in to episode 1,289 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.