In an appearance at a Fox town hall event hosted by Fox News host Harris Faulkner on Wednesday, former President Donald Trump falsely claimed he could ban transgender women from playing women’s sports in the U.S., an authority he wouldn’t have as president.
“You just ban it. The president bans it. You just don’t let it happen,” Trump said in response to an audience member’s question about trans athletes in women’s sports. “Not a big deal.”
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The exchange included another false claim when Trump railed against a member of the San Jose State Spartans volleyball team. The team member appeared in a video of the team’s match last Thursday. The video has since been widely circulated in far-right media.
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Last month, a Spartan team member was outed as transgender by the team’s co-captain, Brooke Slusser, who joined former athletes in a Georgia lawsuit seeking to overturn NCAA guidelines allowing trans female athletes to participate in women’s college sports. Slusser named her teammate in the suit.
The video shows the player that Slusser outed spiking a ball. The ball hits an opposing player from San Diego State University in the shoulder, briefly knocking her down. Trump ran with it.
“I saw the slam, it was a slam. I never saw a ball hit so hard, hit the girl in the head,” Trump lied. “But other people, even in volleyball, they’ve been permanently, I mean, they’ve been really hurt badly. Women playing men.”
Trump claimed again he would ban trans women in sports by an authoritative order.
“But you don’t have to do the volleyball. We stop it. We stop it. We absolutely stop it. You can’t have it,” he said.
San Diego State disputed Trump’s fabrication of their player’s action in a statement later that day.
“This did not happen,” SDSU director of athletic communications Jamie McConeghy said in a statement reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. “The ball hit her in the shoulder. She was uninjured and did not miss a play.”
McConeghy added that San Diego State has “called for multiple corrections from media outlets.”
Trump didn’t elaborate on the authority he thinks he’d have to change the rules in sports, which are governed by numerous local, national, and international bodies.
“He would have absolutely no authority or power to ban transgender women in college sports. That is not a legal possibility,” Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, told the Chronicle.
The player Trump lied about hasn’t commented publicly. Her school condemned the former president for using her as a political pawn.
“At San Jose State, we condemn any targeted campaign against any of our students, and we will continue to live the values outlined in the California State University Non-Discrimination Policy,” the school said in a statement Wednesday afternoon. “Our athletes all comply with NCAA and Mountain West Conference policies and they are eligible to play under the rules of those organizations.”
Trump has stoked fear and loathing of the transgender community in his bid to reclaim the White House. His campaign, political action committees, and other MAGA Republican candidates and groups have spent tens of millions of dollars on television ads targeting trans people in an effort to get their far-right base to the polls. Banning trans women in sports has been a particular focus.
Since Slusser was publicly outed her teammate, four women’s volleyball teams have forfeited matches against San Jose State, including Southern Utah, Boise State, Wyoming, and Utah State.
On Monday, players with the University of Nevada’s women’s volleyball team unilaterally announced they wouldn’t face San Jose State in an upcoming match.
“We, the University of Nevada Reno women’s volleyball team, forfeit against San Jose State University,” they said in a statement shared with the awkwardly-named conservative sports site Outkick.
The university said that despite the protest, the match would be played as scheduled, while individual players would be granted the opportunity to sit out.
San Jose State’s coach Todd Kress said the fallout over his co-captain’s actions has been hard on the team.
“Concentrating on what we can do on the court has, quite frankly, been very tough lately,” Kress said. “There have been outside forces who have sought to divide our team, our university, our conference and our sport.”
He added, “I just have faith that we’ll eventually be able to put the outside noise aside and be able to play for each other and find love for one another again.”
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