Natasha Cloud is adamant about running for politics after her WNBA career ends.
The 30-year-old has been a member of the Washington Mystics since 2015. While she hasn’t announced when she might retire, she said that given the state of the U.S. political landscape, she feels the need to go into politics after her playing days are over.
Natasha Cloud says she now plans to get into politics after her career ends. #wnba pic.twitter.com/8Azy3V2ePZ
— Kareem Copeland (@kareemcopeland) May 26, 2022
“We’re out here preparing for Connecticut, and yes, it’s our jobs, we get paid to do this, but how do you even talk about that with what’s going on in our country?” Cloud said.
It’s her second such speech this week after 19 children and two adults were shot and killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday. It’s the 27th school shooting in the United States since 2022 began and the deadliest school shooting since Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012.
Cloud has in the past alluded to a political career. In March, she tweeted that she would run for mayor in her hometown of Philadelphia after her WNBA career. She also told NBC Sports Washington that she could see herself running for governor of Pennsylvania.
“It’s frustrating; it really, really is,” Cloud said Thursday. “We could do everything that we can. We can utilize our platforms. We can do marches. We can try to educate people. But, if our representatives don’t do their jobs, if they don’t fulfill their oaths that they took to serve their communities, to not line their pockets, to not worry about their own power, what can we do?”
On top of the shooting in Uvalde, Cloud pointed to the recent supermarket shooting in Buffalo as another reason to run for office.
“It’s at a point now where after my career, I will go into politics because I’m tired of it,” she said. “I’m tired of it being a political game. These are people’s lives. We’re constantly worrying about power, money and all this other s— that doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter. We’re talking about lives. We’re talking about 10-, nine-, eight-, seven-, six-, five-year-old kids. We’re talking about elderly folks just trying to go grab groceries in the only grocery store in their community because why? It’s a lower economic community. It’s a Black community. This was a minority school, for the most part.”
