That didn’t age well.
A Fox News clip from 2021 resurfaced this week showing J.D. Vance criticizing both Simone Biles for dropping out of the Tokyo Games and U.S. media for supporting the gymnast amid struggles with her mental health.
“What I find so weird about this… is that we’ve tried to turn a very tragic moment, Simone Biles quitting the Olympic team, into this act of heroism,” Vance said at the time. “I think it reflects pretty poorly on our sort of therapeutic society that we try to praise people, not for moments of strength, not for moments of heroism, but for their weakest moments.”
Vance acknowledged that “being an athlete at that level is incredibly tough.” In the same sentence, however, Vance said that the American press should have reported that it was a “shame” that Biles quit the Olympic team without praising her for prioritizing her mental health.
“Instead, what our press has done, I think, has turned this into this weird therapeutic moment,” he said. “Let’s praise her for [dropping out]. And I think that’s really where the problem therein lies.”
Biles has since spoken ad nauseam about her decision to drop out of the Tokyo Games, which has been attributed as the reason the U.S. women’s gymnastics team returned home with only a silver medal.
The decision to drop out was partially due to her mental health, Biles said, but was also for her safety. She said she was suffering from the “twisties,” a dangerous phenomenon that gymnasts experience in which they lose their perception of their body while in the air. Gymnasts who compete with the twisties are at risk of severely injuring themselves.
Biles, 27, has since put the twisties and her other troubles from the Tokyo Games in the past after taking two years off from the sport. At this year’s Paris Olympics, she finished as the leading scorer on Tuesday as Team USA won gold in the women’s all-around gymnastics final.
Biles could win as many as four more medals in her remaining Olympics events. She’s scheduled to compete again Thursday in the individual all-around final and is also qualified to compete in three of the four event finals: Vault, balance beam, and floor exercise.
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