Lauren Boebert’s anti-trans campaign, that tried to raise funds for an Olympic boxer who quit seconds into a bout against a fighter falsely accused of being a biological male, has failed miserably.
The embattled Colorado Congresswoman launched a fundraiser for Italian athlete Angela Carini in August after she abandoned her boxing match against Algerian athlete Imane Khelif.
Khelif was at the centre of a media storm during the summer games when she was wrongly accused of being transgender.
Now it has emerged that Carini’s coach rejected Boebert’s fundraising efforts and the money is being returned to donors.
“A person with XY chromosomes was allowed to compete against actual, biological women in the Olympics,” Boebert said in a September 30 post on X. “Americans were rightly outraged, and gave generously to my GiveSendGo fund for Angela Carini, one of the women who was beaten up in the ring and that had to stop her match to avoid being seriously injured.”
The fundraiser argued that Carini’s chance at a gold medal had been “stolen.” It aimed to raise $196,000, the equivalent of Italy’s gold medal prize money. “As of August 15, it had garnered $67,000. “Every dollar contributed will go directly to Angela Carini,” the description read.
But Carini didn’t want the money.
“After my team heard from Angela’s coach, we were informed that she didn’t want to continue with what has been a difficult chapter in her life. While she appreciated the support by so many, she decided not to accept the funds,” Boebert wrote on X this week.
“GiveSendGo refunded the contributions late last week as a result. Thank you to everyone who stepped up to right this wrong. Your generosity is overwhelming!” she added.
Boebert’s fundraiser launched as Khelif came under fire from conservatives who falsely labeled her as a man. Even Donald Trump chimed in, saying at a campaign rally in August: “In the Olympics, they had two transitioned…They were men. They transitioned to women, and they were in the boxing.”
Although he didn’t name the two boxers he was referring to, the former president appeared to be referring to Khelif and Taiwanese boxer Li Yu-ting.
The two women were launched into the spotlight after the International Boxing Association, a governing body for boxing that has been banned from the Olympics since 2023, abruptly disqualified both athletes from competing in the world championships for allegedly failing opaque eligibility tests.
Khelif is a woman and was born female. An International Olympic Committee spokesperson said at the height of the controversy following the Khelif-Carini match that the Algerian boxer was “born female, was registered female, lived her life as a female, boxed as a female, has a female passport.” He added: “This is not a transgender case.”
Carini even apologized to her opponent for leaving the match. “It wasn’t something I intended to do,” she told Italian 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.”
Khelif has since become a punching bag for the right. The hateful rhetoric has become so intense that she filed a legal complaint in France for “aggravated cyber-harassment” against her.
Her lawyer told the Associated Press in August that the complaint pertained to the “misogynist, racist and sexist campaign” against the athlete, who ended up winning a gold medal at the Paris Olympics.
