Riley Gaines blasts AOC after Democrat mocked her for tying with trans swimmer Lia Thomas

Riley Gaines has brutally destroyed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez after the Democrat politician mocked her for previously tying with transgender swimmer Lia Thomas.

Gaines and Thomas shared the pool at the 2022 NCAA Division I Women's Swimming and Diving Championships, where the latter triumphed to win her first title. 

In the only race that featured both Gaines and Thomas, they tied in fifth-place, which is often used as ammunition against Gaines amid her recent legal battles.

The former collegiate swimmer has been outspoken in her criticism of transgender athletes and has been leading a group of 19 female athletes in suing the NCAA. 

The topic of their race came up again on Monday afternoon after Gaines and Ocasio-Cortez became embroiled in a war-of-words on social media. 

It began after Gaines shared an image of 'AOC' alongside Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and Bernie Sanders at the 'New York Is Not For Sale' rally.

Gaines posted the picture on X, along with the caption: 'We're being destroyed from within' and it didn't take long for Ocasio-Cortez to fire back. 

In reference to their 2022 race, Ocasio-Cortez wrote: 'Maybe if you channeled all this anger into swimming faster you wouldn’t have come in fifth'. 

In response, Gaines wrote: 'It's *always* "we support women's rights!" until it's a woman who wants the right to compete & undress free from less than mediocre men Keep your mentally ill men out of our sports, locker rooms, prisons, etc.'

However, she didn't stop there. In a follow-up post, she wrote: 'It’s always hilarious when they think they’ve landed a “gotcha” by pointing out I was the 5th-fastest woman *in the nation* yet they conveniently forget the mediocre man who ranked 462nd in the men’s division lol. Misogynistic dunce'.

Before her transition, Thomas had previously competed for the University of Pennsylvania on their men's swimming team, where she ranked 462nd in the division.

The fiery back-and-forth comes one month after Gaines secured a huge win in her legal battle to kick biological men out of women's sport. 

It was reported by Outkick that a federal judge in Atlanta ruled that the Title IX claims against the NCAA can move forward to the next stage, in a big win for Gaines and her fellow female athletes.

The lawsuit surrounds NCAA policies that have allowed biological male athletes to compete in women's sports, and stems from the 2022 NCAA Women's Swimming and Diving Championships, in which Thomas won a national title.

At that event, Thomas - a biological male - used the women's locker rooms, showers and restrooms, after Georgia Tech hosted under an NCAA agreement that gave the association operational control of the venue.

'[Thomas] was full naked and, of course, full intact inches away from where we, 18-, 19-, 20-year-old girls, were fully undressed,' Gaines told Fox News in March. 

The original lawsuit named Georgia officials and the Georgia Tech Athletic Association but the court has now dismissed those, keeping only the NCAA as a defendant in the case as Gaines and Co seek to hold them accountable for previous policies that allowed transgender athletes to compete.

While the case is allowed to progress, the court also threw out two further claims against the association, keeping only the Title IX claim - and the suit will now center around deciding whether the NCAA received federal funding.

Gaines herself has become the de facto spokesperson for kicking transgender athletes out of women's sport, regularly appearing in the media to give her views on the controversial matter.