Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and women’s sports advocate and former NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines engaged in a heated online exchange this week, trading barbs over politics, athletic history, and motherhood.
The interaction began after Gaines criticized a photo from a rally in Queens featuring Ocasio-Cortez, New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). In her post, Gaines wrote, “We’re being destroyed from within,” later referencing past criticism of Elon Musk for a similar gesture.
Ocasio-Cortez responded by referencing the 2022 NCAA women’s swimming finals, where Gaines tied for fifth place against University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas.
“Maybe if you channeled all this anger into swimming faster you wouldn’t have come in fifth,” she wrote.
Gaines pushed back, noting her ranking and Thomas’s previous placement in men’s competition. She argued that her advocacy centers on protecting women’s sports and spaces.
Additional exchanges followed, with Gaines asserting that women should have the right to compete and access facilities without biological males present.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) weighed in in support of Gaines, highlighting her collegiate accomplishments and calling on Ocasio-Cortez to “support all women.”
During an appearance on Fox News, Gaines challenged Ocasio-Cortez to a debate on a range of political and cultural issues.
Ocasio-Cortez replied online, “And I would like to challenge this person to get a real job.”
Gaines, who welcomed her first child, Margot, in September, responded, “I have a real job. I’m a mom. It’s the most important and rewarding job in the world.”
She also suggested that Ocasio-Cortez would better understand her position if she were a mother herself and noted the ongoing government shutdown in a follow-up post.
As of Tuesday, Ocasio-Cortez had not issued further public comments on the exchange.
