What could possibly be better than sitting down with Michele Tafoya for a lengthy conversation? Sitting down with the legendary sports journalist and now full-time podcaster for two lengthy conversations. Yesterday, Michele interviewed me on her eponymous Salem Podcast Network show to discuss the Durham report and other issues, not long after Jazz Shaw also made an appearance.
Just after wrapping up that fun conversation, Michele joined me for my Ed Morrissey Show podcast to discuss her journey in media and why she moved from sports to the political/cultural fight. That impulse didn’t just start last year, Michele says. “For me, it started on 9/11. That day changed my life profoundly,” she explains. “Anytime I think back to that morning, I can picture vividly — as I’m sure you can — exactly what I was doing, where I was, and what happened in the hours that followed.”
That started her on a quest to dig deeper and find meaningful answers to the questions the attacks raised. “How did this happen? Why did this happen? Why are we blaming ourselves that this happened to us?” Michele recalls her reaction. “And it just kind of built and built and built.”
In the two decades that followed, Michele built a sterling career as a sports reporter and commentator in both local markets and on national platforms like CBS, ESPN/ABC, and finally NBC Sports. In her final years at the latter, Michele began feeling a necessity of building her own platform to pursue these deeper questions, and asked NBC about it. “They didn’t prohibit me,” Michele says; “They just said we get it, but we would like to ask you to wait until you’re gone from here, because we just don’t want to court any controversy.”
I expressed some surprise at that, given all of the performative wokeness that had enveloped the NFL at the time, which Michele says was part of the reason why they were gun-shy. “They were already dealing with NFL fans going,” she explains. “So I understood it and respected it, but that made the urgency of I gotta get a timeline here of when I want to leave this thing because I gotta talk, I gotta be in this.”
And now Michele is firmly “in this,” and willing to discuss anything and everything. She already has had former colleagues such as her still-good friend Al Michaels on: “We had a blast, all we talked about was sports [and] marriage,” as well as Bob Costas on for a pleasantly friendly and mature debate on issues. Michele is particularly passionate about the efforts to erase women by the radical transgender movement and has had Riley Gaines on her podcast twice to discuss it.
“I think the world of her,” Michele tells me, “because she is putting herself out there to say, ‘I don’t care if you are living life as a trans, but when you’re a male biologically and you come to compete with me in a swimming pool, it’s not fair.’ And she’s right,” Michele continues. “It’s not fair and it’s pretty simple. And I’ve talked to people in the gay community and the lesbian community who say to me, I can’t even believe we’re debating this.”
Michele and I both have more to say on a number of issues, too:
- On her approach in her new venture: “I wanted this notion that I’m not going to be way over here, I’m not going to be way over here. We’re going to have sane conversations. We’re not going to scream and yell at each other, we’re going to talk civilly. And maybe that’s boring to some people, but I think there are a lot of people out there who really crave that, who just want to, break from the noise and want to be educated and learn something and be curious about a topic.”
- Sports/entertainment industry wokeness: “I can think of a time that I turned on a women’s basketball game on ESPN right after the legislation was signed in Florida, what they like to call the Don’t say Gay Bill, which never says that in the bill if you read it. But these commentators came on camera and said, we want you to know that we disagree with this and that everyone’s welcome and yada yada. And I’m thinking you haven’t read the bill, you don’t know what’s in it, you just haven’t, otherwise you wouldn’t be saying this.”
- The border crisis: “Even though my ancestors came from other countries, this southern border situation, I think, is just absolute chaos and nonsense and uncontrollable. And … the administration is refusing to control it, and I’m not sure why, but I think it’s harming not only Americans, but harming people who are making the trek here. And it’s given a lot of power to the cartels who are bringing them all here.”
There’s plenty more in our conversation, and plenty more in our talk in Michele’s podcast too. I’ll give you a brief glimpse in this YouTube short, but be sure to subscribe to Michele’s podcast and her YouTube page, and watch or listen to it all:
The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!