Instead of addressing Simone Biles’ mental health with the seriousness it deserved, Laura Ingraham trotted out her regular sidekick Raymond Arroyo to spout off his amateur thoughts on Biles’ decision to suddenly pull out of some Olympic events.
Arroyo, doesn’t have a single discernible credential in anything related to Biles, the sport of gymnastics, the Olympics or mental health. Although given the fact that he’s a devout Catholic, maybe he knows something about sexual abuse scandals, given how many of them have rocked the Catholic church in recent years.
Ingraham played a clip of Biles saying she “took a step back” because she didn’t want to injure herself and she thought it “best if [her teammates] took over and did the rest of the job.”
The fact is that a gymnastics injury could be catastrophic to Biles or any other gymnast. If Biles is not certain of her ability to compete, why should she risk it?
But Arroyo seems to think he knows better about how Biles should have conducted her life and made her decision:
ARROYO: Laura, I have a slightly schizophrenic reaction to all of this. Look, on the one hand, I get it. She had a bad performance. She was lost midair in a flip. She probably feared breaking her neck or permanently injuring herself. There is also the traumatic sex abuse that she endured at the hands of that evil Dr. Nassar.
But the time to work through all of that was before the Olympic trials, not during the Olympic Games. You're part of a team now. And if you can physically perform, your job is to get into that headspace where you can overcome your fears and your jitters, and stick the landing.
We saw a clip of teammate Jordan Chiles saying about Biles' abrupt decision, “We all understood everything that was happening, and we just support her.”
But what would they know? Arroyo went on to lecture Biles a bit more, this time for over-hyping herself:
ARROYO: [L]ook, Simone Biles has been an incredible champion, but I do think she succumbed to a lot of the media pressure, and pressure and expectations, Laura, that she placed on herself. She wore that leotard with the goat during some of the trials. So she started embracing this idea that she was the greatest of all time. That gets in your head. And I think some of that may have played against her when her body started doing other things during the competition here.
At no time did super-duper Christian Arroyo display any empathy for Biles.
You can watch him below, from the July 28, 2021 The Ingraham Angle.