NFL Reporter-Turned Senate Hopeful Roundly Mocked For Campaign Claim

MS NOW’s Chris Hayes called Minnesota Senate candidate Michele Tafoya's claim that walking the NFL sidelines taught her leadership “the funniest argument for why someone is qualified for a job I've ever seen.”

Former NBC football reporter Michele Tafoya’s announcement on Wednesday that she was running as a Republican for an open Senate seat in Minnesota garnered a lot of attention ― and a whole bunch of mockery.

That’s because of a claim she made in announcing the campaign that many people on social media found dubious. “I’m running for U.S. Senate to bring that experience to Washington and deliver the real results Minnesota deserves,” she wrote on the X post featuring a campaign video.

Tafoya appeared to equate asking NFL coaches a couple of questions while they are walking to the locker room as real training for governance, as she boasted in the video’s voiceover:

“For years, I covered the biggest football games in America. I walked the sidelines when the pressure was mounting and the stakes were the highest, that job taught me about more than football. It taught me about how leadership really works.”

For some reason, many people on social media weren’t convinced that watching football games on the sidelines is really the best preparation for representing a state in the U.S. Senate.