Conservative campaigner Riley Gaines claims that death threats have forced her to start wrapping her newborn daughter in a bulletproof blanket.
The former collegiate swimmer’s calls for the exclusion of trans women from female-only sports has led her to become a fixture of the MAGA movement, with the 25-year-old appearing at Trump rallies.
Gaines claimed on Fox News’ Outnumbered that the backlash to her views meant she had to take steps to protect her three-month-old baby, Margot.
The athlete attended the Supreme Court Tuesday, to hear arguments in case that could see transgender women barred from female sports, and took her little girl with her.
“She was there with me on the Supreme Court steps,” Gaines said, referring to her daughter. “And honestly, just as you said, there’s a level of emotion to it, especially when you have to consider the fact that you have a 3-month-old baby that you have to wrap in a bulletproof blanket because of the threats that were present there yesterday.”
Gaines claimed that activists working to challenge restrictions on trans athletes are “giving the middle finger” to her daughter and criticised the Democratic position on the issue.
“All these Democrats and their insane policies and the things they support — I think 130 Democrats signed a brief supporting the boys in the case,” she raged. “They think they are giving the middle finger to President Trump.”
“That’s not who they are giving the middle finger to. They are giving the middle finger to my little baby girl.”
Gaines’ social media activity has seen her clash with prominent Democrats in the past, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The pair traded blows online last October when Gaines alleged that the United States was being “destroyed from within” by Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders and the now-New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Ocasio-Cortez fired back with a sharp dig at Gaines tying for fifth place with Lia Thomas, a transgender swimmer, in 2022.
“Maybe if you channeled all this anger into swimming faster you wouldn’t have come in fifth,” Ocasio-Cortez blasted.
Gaines has also clashed with Olympic gold medallist Simone Biles, when the swimmer took a swipe at a high school softball team which had a transgender pitcher.
“To be expected when your star player is a boy,” Gaines wrote after the team won.
“You’re truly sick, all of this campaigning because you lost a race,” Biles wrote, again referencing Gaines tying with Thomas.
