Sideline reporter Michele Tafoya is leaving NBC Sports in favor of the GOP. Just a day after reporting from Super Bowl LVI, Tafoya announced that she would be ending her decades-long career in sports media to co-chair the Minnesota Republican gubernatorial campaign for Kendall Qualls.
She addressed the career move during an appearance on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Wednesday, telling the Fox News host she had been considering the career change for quite some time.
“This has been on mind. I’ve been waking up every day with a palpable pull at my gut that … my side, my view, my middle ground kind of moderate viewpoint is not being represented to the rest of the world, I didn’t feel,” she said. “And so, rather than, you know, just banging it out on Twitter or Instagram everyday, I thought, ‘I’ve got to do something.’ I have benefited greatly from the American dream and I feel like, for the sake of my kids and because I so love this country, I’ve got to start giving back.”
Tafoya told Carlson that she’d been inspired to pursue politics after seeing her friends were afraid to “get into political conversations.”
“This is the most terrifying thing in the world to me right now, that people are afraid to talk,” she said. “These are words coming out of our mouths. Yeah, we could probably hurt people with our words, I acknowledge that. But I get to choose my reaction to everybody’s words, and everybody else gets to choose their reaction to my words.”
Tafoya also addressed her appearance last fall on “The View,” where, during a discussion about critical race theory in schools, she sparred with host Whoopi Goldberg.
“Why are we even teaching that the color of the skin matters? Because to me, what matters is your character and your values,” Tafoya said on “The View.”
“Yes, but you know. You live in the United States,” Goldberg, “The View’s” moderator, replied. “You know that color of skin has been mattering to people for years.”
While speaking with Carlson, who praised her commentary on “The View,” calling it “brave,” Tafoya said that she feels society is “looking in the rearview mirror and not absorbing the progress that we’ve made in this country and building on it, and recognizing it.”
“I don’t think a person like Whoopi Goldberg would have had that role 50 years ago. She has that now,” she continued, explaining that she could come up with many other examples of progress.
“And it breaks my heart that my kids are being taught that skin color matters,” Tafoya said.
She continued: “The world is integrated. Let’s continue that and have everyone find out what we all have in common, not just what we have in common with people who look like us.”