Billionaire Mark Cuban confronted former President Donald Trump‘s claim that Olympic boxer Imane Khelif is transgender on social media on Saturday.
Khelif of Algeria won her round of 16 welterweight bout against Italian boxer Angela Carini in 46 seconds on Thursday at the Paris 2024 Olympics. Carini pulled out of the fight after a barrage of punches by Khelif—ending with a powerful hit to Carini’s nose.
The Algerian boxer has since faced mounting attacks on her gender, with people criticizing her for being allowed to fight women in the Olympic ring. Khelif was assigned female at birth and identifies as a woman. Her father even publicly showed her birth certificate, according to reports.
Khelif was disqualified from the International Boxing Association’s (IBA) world championships in 2023 for failing gender eligibility tests. The Olympics, however, has its own set of entry and medical regulations, which Khelif met. Khelif also competed in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and won a silver medal at the IBA’s 2022 world championships.
Trump, the GOP presidential nominee who has been critical of Khelif, said at a rally in Atlanta on Saturday: “Now all you have to do is look at the boxers. This young girl from Italy, a champion boxer, she got hit so hard she didn’t know what the hell hit her.”
“It’s a person that transitioned,” the former president said of Khelif. “He was a good male boxer. And [Carini] didn’t even go down. He hit her with two jabs and she said ‘I’m out.'”
Cuban, a Shark Tank investor and former owner of the Dallas Mavericks, replied to a clip of Trump’s remarks on X, formerly Twitter, late Saturday and wrote: “Even worse. She is from Algeria. In Algeria it is illegal to be gay. The idea they would send a gay or trans Olympian is insane.”
It is also illegal in Algeria to change your gender.
Newsweek has reached out to Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, and Cuban via email on Sunday morning.
In a separate X post, Cuban also mentioned times when Khelif lost fights, like her bout against Irish boxer Amy Broadhurst at the IBA’s 2022 world championships.
On Wednesday, Broadhurst spoke out about Khelif, writing on X, “Have a lot of people texting me over Imane Khelif. Personally I don’t think she has done anything to ‘cheat’. I thinks it’s the way she was born & that’s out of her control. The fact that she has been beating by 9 females before says it all.”
Meanwhile, Carini has said that “all this controversy makes me sad” and apologized for not shaking Khelif’s hand after their fight.
“It wasn’t something I intended to do,” Carini said, according to the Italian sports newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport. “Actually, I want to apologize to her and everyone else. I was angry because my Olympics had gone up in smoke. I don’t have anything against Khelif. Actually, if I were to meet her again I would embrace her.”
Trump has used the controversy surrounding Khelif as a way to repeat conservative talking points about gender and sports. Other conservatives like Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA and Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, have also spoken out against Khelif.
The former president shared a clip of Khelif and Carini’s bout on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Thursday and wrote: “I WILL KEEP MEN OUT OF WOMEN’S SPORTS!”
Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Newsweek in an article published Saturday morning: “President Trump has been unequivocally clear that he will NOT stand for men competing in women’s sports—an insane and unfair reality that has been allowed to transpire because of Radical Left politicians like [Vice President] Kamala Harris.”
Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is a proponent of LGBTQ+ rights.
What Have Officials Said?
The IBA released a statement on Wednesday saying that Khelif and Paris Olympic athlete Lin Yu-ting, a Taiwanese female boxer who was also disqualified from the IBA world championships in 2023 for failing gender eligibility tests, “did not undergo a testosterone examination,” but were subject to “separate and recognized” tests that will remain confidential.
“IBA remains committed in ensuring competitive fairness in all of our events, we absolutely condemn the inconsistencies in eligibility to compete in the boxing competition held in the Paris Olympic Games 2024,” the boxing organization said in another statement released on Thursday.
Lin competed in the Tokyo Olympics and on Friday, she won her bout against Sitora Turdibekova of Uzbekistan 5:0 in Paris.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) defended its decision to allow Lin and Khelif to complete, writing in a statement on Thursday, “Every person has the right to practice sport without discrimination.”
It continued: “The current aggression against these two athletes is based entirely on this arbitrary decision, which was taken without any proper procedure — especially considering that these athletes had been competing in top-level competition for many years. The IOC is saddened by the abuse that the two athletes are currently receiving.”
