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Riley Gaines to AOC: Stay in Your Lane

The swimmer and the self-appointed savior of the people swap Olympic-level blows

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Jenna McCarthy
Oct 29, 2025
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There are bad takes, there are delusional takes, and then there’s a woman currently collecting a government paycheck despite not having worked in weeks telling a world-class athlete to “get a real job.”

Hahahaha where’s the lie?

In case you missed it, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—the mixologist turned Congresswoman turned Zohran Mamdani hype-woman—decided to mock swimmer Riley Gaines on X after Gaines posted a photo of AOC (coincidentally doing the Sieg Heil salute) with the caption “we’re being destroyed from within.”

AOC, equipped with the intellectual vigor of a refurbished Roomba, opened her copy of I Know You Are But What Am I: Third Grade Insults for All Ages and cockily fired back:

“Maybe if you channeled all this anger into swimming faster you wouldn’t have come in fifth.”

She did. She actually put that in print. That’s right: a woman who formerly served screwdrivers for a living—one who laments on her own website “how deeply and unconsciously, as well as consciously, so many people in this country hate women”— is out there publicly dissing a sister for not being first enough.

You are cordially invited to the Cool Kids’ Table.

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