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Scott Jennings Once More Issues a Key Reminder About 80/20 Issue of Trans Politics

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  March 06, 2025 9:00 PM

CNN's Scott Jennings has reminded before that protecting girls' and women's sports is an 80/20 issue, but sometimes his fellow panelists need to be told more than once. That's especially as every Senate Democrat earlier this week voted against a bill that would make sure protections are in place, after President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month. 

While on "The Arena with Kasie Hunt," Jennings brought up "this whole revolution of common sense idea that Trump is pushing" when speaking about protecting girls' and women's sports, after Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) claimed during his podcast he's supposedly breaking with his fellow Democrats on this issue. "This is the issue that maybe people associate with it the most," Jennings continued, "because if there was ever an 80/20 or 90/10 issue in America, it's this one!" 

As another guest could be seen nodding along on the panel, Jennings referenced one of Trump's guests during his remarks at a joint session of Congress on Tuesday. Payton McNabb was a former high school athlete in North Carolina who was injured by a man who was allowed to play on the girls' volleyball team. As Jennings pointed out, though, liberals still laughed at and mocked McNabb, prompting an uncomfortable facial expression from host Kasie Hunt. 

"And so, I think the Democratic Party is torn up about it, but the American people aren't. Trump used it to political advantage, but then they expected him to do something about it, which he has done. If Democrats don't get on the right side of at least one 80/20 issue in America, they're gonna lose again in '28," Jennings also reminded.

Although the bill protecting girls' and women's sports failed to overcome the filibuster in the Senate, thanks to all Democrats voting against it, it had passed the House back in January. Even still, only two Democrats voted in favor of the bill, while one member voted "present." 

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Polls continue to show that protecting girls' and women's sports is a popular issue with Americans, of all political persuasions. Last week, a poll from Harvard Caps/Harris showed that by 69-31 percent, voters support "Banning men who have undergone operations and hormones to become women from girls’ sports." Fifty percent of Democrats also support such a proposal.

Still another poll, conducted by The New York Times/Ipsos, showed even better results. The poll from earlier this year found that 79 percent of Americans don't believe men should be able to participate in women's sports. Even 67 percent of Democratic respondents said so. 

The issue of transgender politics came up later on the show as well, after liberal commentator Van Jones needed to be schooled on how our tax dollars were funding ridiculous proposals such as "transgender mice," and to the tune of millions of dollars. 

Even David Axelrod, another liberal panelist, pointed out that Americans want to cut waste, fraud, and abuse from the government, though there was some quibbling over what that meant. 

"Well, it's not all indiscriminate," Jennings pointed out. "We don't really need the transgender mice do we?" Before he could get out his next full sentence, Jones interrupted to claim that "that's not even real," though Jennings assured him it was. CNN even had to fix their fact-check of Tuesday night's speech on this issue.

As Jones tried to further delve into discussing such experiments on mice, with Jennings laughing throughout, Axelrod jumped back into the conversation. "Don't spoil a good troll here," he urged Jones, as laughter could be heard throughout. 

Jennings did turn the conversation into a serious one, though. "Here's the point: they have found some things," he mentioned, which even Jones had to agree with. "And the greatest public relations advice I could give them is this: you've found stuff, you're going to find more stuff, and there's gonna come a point where you could take this to the Congress and have a really good hearing and a really good public display."