Media Matters Feels Wrath of Riley Gaines After Hit Piece on Her Statements About Lia Thomas

In the aftermath of the major announcement of Twitter/X CEO Elon Musk's "thermonuclear lawsuit" against the left-wing smear merchants at Media Matters for America, a lot of the group's prior targets have been airing some grievances on the Twitter machine as past MMFA hit pieces resurface in the process.

Among them was a summer hit piece on Save Women's Sports spokeswoman and women's swim champion Riley Gaines, who has been on MMFA's radar for some time considering she's a strong conservative woman who brushes intimidation attempts by cancel culture mobs off her shoulder like a stray piece of lint.

In the article, they claimed that "Over a year after her last race against Lia Thomas, Riley Gaines has built a media career on the trans swimmer’s name":

Gaines has appeared on Fox News 29 times for a total time of more than two hours and 38 minutes between April 2022 and the end of May 2023. Over 50% of these appearances took place in the last two months — a year after her race against Thomas on March 18, 2022. Gaines named Thomas in only 34% of all her interviews and not at all in the last month, demonstrating a general thematic expansion beyond the event that initially provided her with a platform.

MMFA LGBTQ Program Researcher Alyssa Tirrell, who wrote the piece, alleged throughout that Gaines routinely engaged in a pattern of anti-trans "hate" disguised as concerns about the future of women's sports because apparently in Tirrell's and MMFA's views, women who have been "bested" in a sport by someone who was born a male but who now identifies as female are just too darned loud and need to quiet down a bit.

Gaines, as we've documented previously, is not the shrinking violet type, and responded accordingly to the accusations by noting that it was Lia Thomas who in fact made a name off the backs of collegiate female swimmers, not the other way around:

Media Matters says I built my name on Lia Thomas' back.

No, @mmfa Lia Thomas made a name for himself on OUR backs. The backs of girls and women.

I would happily go back to being a dentist tomorrow if this was all curbed, but I was taught to stand up to injustice when you see pic.twitter.com/rOjkPwnlQO
— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) November 21, 2023

Something else to note is that Thomas did this by switching to the women's division after not doing so well in the men's division:

The numbers paint a clear picture. The fact that the University of Pennsylvania swimmer soared from a mid-500s ranking (554th in the 200 freestyle; all divisions) in men’s competition to one of the top-ranked swimmers in women’s competition tells the story of the unfairness which unfolded at the NCAA level.

This is the pinned post at the top of Gaines' Twitter page:

Lia Thomas is not a brave, courageous woman who EARNED a national title. He is an arrogant, cheat who STOLE a national title from a hardworking, deserving woman. The @ncaa is responsible.

If I was a woman working at ESPN, I would walk out. You're spineless @espn #boycottESPN https://t.co/DF3n5RWsmV
— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) March 26, 2023