Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump praised Caitlin Clark and discussed the pay gap for female athletes during a surprise visit to former NFL coach Bill Belichick’s podcast on Monday.
Trump was very complimentary of the Indiana Fever’s star rookie. When asked what he thought of Caitlin Clark, Trump even asked if she could shoot that way in the NBA.
“She’s incredible, by the way. I watch, too. I think she’s incredible,” Trump said of Clark. “The shot, I watch this shot go in. It’s like, couldn’t she shoot that way in the NBA? Give her the ball. She’s unbelievable. It’s a phenomenon. It’s something that is taking place, and it’s unusual.”
But regarding the supposed “pay gap” between WNBA and NBA players, Trump was not so quick to advise a leveling of the pay gap.
The former president noted that sometimes things seem to go against expectations.
“Tiger, when he first went out, remember those days when Tiger went out? Or just a great baseball player in the minor leagues or a first-year football player. You see a running back who’s making like minimum, and he turns out to be a superstar. You have that, and probably there’s no real way to guard against it,” he said.
“It sounds unfair, but somebody agrees to a contract. Hopefully, she’ll keep it going and probably will. She’s going to make a lot of money,” Trump said of Clark’s compensation.
Trump also suggested that the pay scale should be based on the market, not political considerations.
“Well, it’s really you got to rely on the market. You can’t go in and just say, ‘Well, we’re going to break this contract because this person did well,’” Trump said. “The league could probably go up and give her a bonus. It wouldn’t kill the league if the league is doing okay.”
He said, “But the league could do something with it because it seems unfair, but you have a lot of that. I see it all the time with football, baseball, and even basketball. When somebody comes in, he turns out to be 10 times better.”
Trump added that you must be careful about ignoring the markets and instituting pay that is not based on market forces. Trump said it is “very tricky. When you start getting involved with trying to recreate markets, it gets very, very tricky. The downside is greater than the upside.”
Many activists say that the pay gap is mere “discrimination.” The minimum salary for an NBA player, for instance, is $1,119,563 annually. Meanwhile, the average pay for women in the WNBA is only $120,648.
However, as Trump noted, much of this disparity is based on market forces. For instance, the WNBA was founded 28 years ago in 1996 but has yet to make a profit. On the other hand, the NBA made $13 billion last year alone and has never failed to make a profit.
Indeed, this year, the WNBA is on track to lose $50 million.
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