The champion American gymnast Simone Biles found time overnight between counting her record haul of Olympic medals to ding Donald Trump on social media after his offensive and untrue remarks at a gathering of Black journalists earlier in the week.
She posted on X early on Friday: “I love my black job” with a black heart emoji alongside, responding to another post of her beaming with her latest Olympic gold medal.
“Simone Biles being the GOAT, winning Gold medals and dominating gymnastics is her black job,” posted the singer Ricky Davila.
I love my black job 🖤 https://t.co/c5wPc6xOY3
— Simone Biles (@Simone_Biles) August 2, 2024
The messages were an unmistakable takedown of the former president, who is once again the Republican party’s nominee for president.
Trump said in an interview with three top political journalists at the convention of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) on Wednesday that migrants were “taking Black jobs” in the US.
When asked to define a “Black job”, he said it was “anybody that has a job”.
His interview, in which he delivered numerous gaffes and insults, dismayed and outraged those gathered at the convention in Chicago and millions watching live on TV. He questioned the US vice-president and Democratic presumptive presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s identity as a Black woman and elicited gasps and derisive laughter from the audience.
Later that day, Harris called the remarks divisive and said: “America deserves better.”
It is not the first time Trump has made such remarks: in the presidential debate with Biden, he said migrants were “taking Black jobs now … they’re taking Black jobs and they’re taking Hispanic jobs”.
Joe Biden responded later, telling the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), in a reference to Harris: “I know what a Black job is: it’s the vice-president of the United States.”
