Trump again slams two gold medal-winning Olympic athletes, incorrectly identifies female boxers as men

Donald Trump. File | Photo credit: AP

Former President Donald Trump Two gold medal-winning Olympic athletes were once again slandered on Saturday (August 17, 2024), with female boxers being wrongly described as men.

Trump made the remarks while speaking at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania and vowing to “keep men out of women’s sports.” He turned his attention to the recently concluded Olympic Games and the case of two athletes who became the subject of international scrutiny due to misconceptions about their gender.

Trump has long criticized transgender people at his rallies and used language about gender identity that many LGBTQ+ advocates consider inaccurate and harmful, focusing particularly on transgender athletes.

In the case of both boxers, both Imane Khalif Algeria and Lee Yu-ting Taiwanese boxers have been facing misconceptions about their gender stemming from last year’s decision by the International Boxing Association, which has been barred from the Olympics, to disqualify both boxers from the world championships for allegedly failing eligibility tests.

Trump didn’t name the athletes but said that “at the Olympics, they had two transitions.”

“They were men. They embraced women, and they got into boxing,” Trump said.

Despite being born and raised as women, Khalif and Lin found themselves in the crosshairs of Western debates about gender, sex and sport when they failed unspecified and opaque eligibility tests for female competition set by the now-banned International Boxing Association.

Trump and other prominent figures have complained about Khalif being allowed to compete, and Trump has previously referred to Khalif as a man.

On Saturday (August 17, 2024), he did it again and called both the athletes participating in the games “crazy” and said, “This is very disrespectful to women.”