EXCLUSIVE: DeSantis Campaign Paid For Endorsement Of Swimmer Riley Gaines

In June of 2023, swimmer Riley Gaines, who rose to semi-prominence after losing to a transgender named Lia Thomas in a swimming competition and speaking out about transgender men in women’s sports, endorsed Governor Ron DeSantis for President of the United States. Gaines claimed that endorsing DeSantis was the “right thing for women”. This statement was even covered in several news articles at the time. See an example of one of those headlines below…

I can exclusively confirm that the DeSantis campaign paid for this endorsement. An investigation into the federal campaign finance data reveals that on August 2nd, 2023, Gaines was paid $11,700 by the DeSantis campaign, with an addition of nearly $1,000 for travel fees. While the endorsement of DeSantis by Gaines was portrayed throughout the media as an activist choosing DeSantis over Trump because of political reasons, the truth is that Gaines was paid to endorse absentee Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

See evidence of those contributions from the DeSantis campaign to swimmer Riley Gaines below…

This speaks to a larger effort by the DeSantis campaign to portray the false image of success and popularity. Unfortunately for DeSantis, paying Riley Gaines to endorse his campaign has yielded nothing in return, as DeSantis is currently trailing President Trump by over 45 points nationally. Not only are DeSantis’ Presidential polls abysmal, his own State is turning on him as well.

DeSantis is now amongst the most unpopular Governors in the entirety of the United States, as he has abandoned the people of Florida, who elected him in 2022 to serve as Governor for the next four years, in order to chase a Presidential nomination that he never had any chance of obtaining. The entire DeSantis political brand has crashed, and he will most likely never hold political office again.

After posting this evidence to Twitter this morning, I was met with vicious attacks claiming that because I published public information about donations from DeSantis to Gaines, that I had somehow ‘doxxed’ Rile Gaines. I did not doxx anybody. I simply showed the public campaign finance data that Gaines was well aware would be published of when she accepted money from a political campaign. I removed my tweet because of the backlash, and posted a statement to my Twitter about the matter. See that statement below…

I deleted a tweet and here’s why:

Posting publicly available FEC documents that are PUBLIC RECORDS and of public interest in a Presidential election year is not “doxxing”. Everyone knows that in order to be paid by a campaign you have to use an address, which is why most people… pic.twitter.com/heZHDT5ViS

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) November 17, 2023

Riley Gaines and Ron DeSantis got caught. I think that is the reason why my bombshell information received the backlash that it did. Anything to divert attention away from the fact that the DeSantis campaign paid to create a mirage of support.