Riley Gaines picked up a new defender in her online spat with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: the creator of the “Harry Potter” universe, J.K. Rowling.
Rowling, a prominent voice against transgender athletes competing in women’s sports since 2019, responded on X to one of Gaines’ critics, who had said Gaines “owes her livelihood to trans athletes.”
Rowling responded that both she and Gaines speak out for female athletes “because it’s the only thing to do if you’re not a coward, a pick me or a living doormat.”
Gaines responded to Rowling’s post, writing “Moral conviction is a foreign concept to some.”
Others in the comments pointed out that before Gaines became known for tying with transgender swimmer Lia Thomas in a NCAA competition, she had planned on a career in dentistry, and they suggested she would have been perfectly happy to continue that career path.
Gaines told the Deseret News earlier this year, “I had been awarded tens of thousands of dollars of scholarship funds to continue this education and career path. But a feeling of total conviction and passion is what ultimately led me to putting that on hold, while pursuing this advocacy.”
That advocacy has led to Gaines being embroiled in several acrimonious exchanges on social media. Earlier this year, Gaines engaged with Olympic gymnast Simone Biles after Biles called her, among other things, a “sore loser” and a bully. Biles later apologized for her comments.
Then last week, Ocasio-Cortez, the U.S. representative from New York who is widely seen as a possible presidential contender in 2028, resurrected the “sore loser” theme when she responded to one of Gaines’ X posts.
Gaines had shared a photo of Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders with New York City mayor candidate Zohran Mamdani at a campaign rally, with the caption, “We’re being destroyed from within.”
“Maybe if you channeled all this anger into swimming faster you wouldn’t have come in fifth,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote.
The advocacy of Gaines, who hosts the “Gaines for Girls” podcast on OutKick, the Fox-owned media platform founded by Clay Travis, was praised by President Donald Trump when he signed an executive order effectively banning transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports by withholding federal funding from schools that allow them to compete.
Gaines was standing behind the president when he made the announcement in February, and Trump called her “the brave swimmer at the forefront of this battle.” In the wake of the executive order, both the NCAA and the U.S. Olympic Committee said they would not allow transgender athletes to compete in women’s competitions.
Others who joined in on the Gaines-AOC conversation included AOC’s House colleague Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who took issue with Ocasio-Cortez suggesting that Gaines doesn’t have a job, and NewsNation host Chris Cuomo, who said that a “teenage trash-talking battle” isn’t befitting a member of Congress and possible presidential candidate.