Civil War Erupts on Sports Twitter Over Pablo Torre-Riley Gaines Spat
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Sportswriter Pablo Torre faced a bevy of attacks from OutKick personalities over an episode of his show focused on former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines.
Thursday’s episode of the investigative show Pablo Torre Finds Out took a closer look at Gaines’s rise to fame in conservative media. The 25-year-old famously competed against transgender swimmer Lia Thomas when the two were in college, and Gaines has since become one of the more vocal advocates for banning trans athletes from women’s sports.
Throughout the 80-minute episode, Torre examined everything from Gaines’s rhetoric to the financial side of her career. Torre also seemed to take issue with what he characterized as Gaines’s relative silence on the matter of her former college coach Lars Jorgensen being accused of sexually assaulting her teammates. Torre cited a tweet Gaines posted when the allegations were brought to light, but criticized her not speaking out on the issue as much as she’s spoken out about trans athletes.
The episode quickly drew the ire of OutKick founder Clay Travis, who called Torre’s investigation “embarrassing” and even referred to him as a “coward.” He also repeatedly challenged Torre to say if he believes “men should be able to compete in women’s sports.”
The episode also got the attention of Megyn Kelly, who called it a “ridiculous hit piece.”
At one point, Torre’s critics found a tweet of his from 2015 in which he claimed, “If you’re defending a man’s right to expose himself to a female employee, against her will, at work, I humbly beg you to never procreate.”
Both Travis and Gaines reposted the tweet to confront Torre about his support of trans athletes.
In response, Torre noted that he was referring to former NFL quarterback Brett Favre. Gaines, as Torre noted with a repost, remained a big supporter of Favre despite the litany of controversies surrounding him.
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