"Simone Biles Earns Extra Kudos for Subtle Dig at Donald Trump | Vanity Fair"

On Thursday, Simone Biles made history as the first US gymnast to win two individual all-around gold medals, two days after leading the women of Team USA to a gold in the team finals at the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics. Biles may be the GOAT in the gymnastics arena, but she is also very talented at the fine art of social media trolling. In a social media post on Friday morning, she made an apparent reference to Donald Trump’s untrue claim that migrants are a threat to Black American employment. “I love my black job,” she said, with a black heart emoji.

In the weeks after Trump shared a talking point that “millions of people that [President Joe Biden] allowed to come in through the border” are coming for “Black jobs,” social media users took offense to the implication that African Americans are only qualified for menial, insecure employment. In response, they started to use the phrase to celebrate the breadth of jobs that Black people actually hold and succeed at. So it was only natural that Biles would join in when singer and social media personality Ricky Davila shared a couple pictures of Biles showing off her gold medal and crystal goat necklace with the caption, “Simone Biles being the GOAT, winning Gold medals and dominating gymnastics is her black job.”

In the recent Netflix docuseries Simone Biles Rising, the gymnast said that her struggles in 2021 at the Tokyo Summer Olympics left her feeling like she had something to prove. At the time, attacking Biles for being public about her struggles with mental health became a cause célèbre on the right wing, and vice presidential nominee JD Vance even got involved.

But in recent weeks, Biles has also appeared to target criticism from inside the gymnastics world about the sport’s turn toward supporting athletes, following a sex abuse scandal and reforms sweeping excessively harsh coaches out of the country’s gyms. After winning the team gold medal with Sunisa Lee, Jordan Chiles, Jade Carey, and Hezly Rivera, Biles posted a group photo to Instagram with the caption “lack of talent, lazy, olympic champions.”

It may have been a reference to recent comments by MyKayla Skinner, a teammate from the Tokyo Games. In a since-deleted video on her YouTube account, Skinner said that the SafeSport reforms had made the sport worse. “I feel like the talent and the depth just isn’t like what it used to be. I mean, obviously a lot of girls don’t work as hard. The girls just don’t have the work ethic,” she said. “Coaches can’t get on athletes, and they have to be really careful what they say.” In a subsequent apology, Skinner said the comments reflected her own experiences under disgraced former coach Márta Károlyi. “I am coming to terms that I have not fully dealt with the emotional and verbal abuse I endured under Marta that perhaps led to my hurtful comments,” she wrote. “I take full responsibility for what I said and I deeply apologize.” (Károlyi has denied claims of abuse, but has conceded that the training environment was “intense.”) Despite the comments, the damage had already been done. After Biles made her post, Skinner reportedly blocked her on Instagram.

For Biles, the celebrations have continued. First, she announced that the Team USA women have decided that their nickname should be the “Golden Girls” because they’re the “oldest Olympic team” yet. Following her apparent jab at Trump, she returned to her core message with a photo that showed her meditating before competition on Thursday, with the caption, “Mental health matters.”