Standing at the Covelli Centre in Youngstown, the president spent a stretch of his midterm pitch on a 30-year-old guard who had never been on the ballot.
“We like Sophie Cunningham. I like Sophie. You have a lot of men wanting to go and watch her. She’s beautiful,” Trump told the crowd.
Then came the self-interrupting beat.
“She’s beautiful. You’re not allowed to say that anymore,” he told the Ohio audience.
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“However, as a politician, please, please let me take it back.”
The scouting report arrived moments later.
“But Sophie is a beautiful young woman. You probably wouldn’t mind her on the team, not to help you with points, but to help you with attendance.”
Cunningham shot 41.9% from three
The framing, that Cunningham’s value sits off the court, collides with her 2026 stat sheet. She played 43 regular-season games for the Fever, averaging 7.9 points, 2.3 rebounds and 1.2 assists, and shot 46.0% from the field.
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Her 41.9% from three slotted her inside a small group of WNBA players who cleared 40% from range this season. She did it almost entirely off the bench, starting three of those 43 games.
The Fever’s season had already ended the day before Trump’s remarks. Indiana were knocked out in the first round of the WNBA playoffs by the defending champions Las Vegas Aces, losing the decisive game 94-83 to go down 2-1 in the series.
Fans call the remarks “creepy” and “gross”
Supporters of the league pushed back quickly on social media.
“Totally not creepy at all to say,” one user wrote on X, with another posting simply, “So gross.”
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A third called the president a “pervert” over the comments. The criticism centred on the suggestion that a professional athlete’s draw to a team came from her appearance rather than her game.
The “MAGA Barbie” tag she inherited in college
Cunningham is not an incidental name in US political conversation. She picked up the nickname “MAGA Barbie” during her college career at Missouri through her online following of conservative figures, and she became a polarising figure in July after an ESPN profile in which she argued against the inclusion of transgender athletes in women’s sports.
Vice President JD Vance publicly called that stance “courageous.”
Cunningham has resisted the hardest version of the label. In the same ESPN interview she described her politics as moderate, saying she agrees “with things on both sides.”
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She has not publicly responded to Trump’s rally comments.
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