Hours after the US women’s national team crashed out of the World Cup, former US President Donald Trump jumped online to blame the loss on star player Megan Rapinoe and the country’s “woke” path under President Joe Biden.
On his social media platform, “Truth Social,” Trump wrote: “The ‘shocking and totally unexpected’ loss by the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team to Sweden is fully emblematic of what is happening to our once great Nation under Crooked Joe Biden. Many of our players were openly hostile to America – No other country behaved in such a manner, or even close. WOKE EQUALS FAILURE. Nice shot Megan, the USA is going to Hell!!! MAGA.”
Rapinoe had stayed quiet about it as she dealt with the loss as well as her impending retirement from the sport she loved. That changed this week.
In an interview with The Atlantic, USWNT star Megan Rapinoe fired back at Trump.
“It always is, because what he’s saying is fake,” Rapinoe said. “It’s a compilation of hit words and hot-button words that don’t actually make any sort of sense or square with reality at all … I think, just in general, the way that our team was spoken about over the course of the tournament, it was fake. And it didn’t make sense to me: In 2019, we were ultra-confident, ultra-swaggy—and won everything. And even though we won, we did it in bad taste, according to our critics. This time, we weren’t confident enough, and we didn’t have the right ‘mentality.’ And so we lost. It’s just so disingenuous. There’s no way for us to win, and there’s no way for us to lose.”
Other conservatives piled on following the team’s loss, suggesting the result was due to their values and perceived criticism of the US.
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“I’m thrilled they lost,” said former Fox News host Megyn Kelly. “You don’t support America, I don’t support you.”
Rapinoe also admitted that she was “disappointed” by Fox’s coverage of the USWNT throughout the World Cup.
Rapinoe has described herself as a “walking protest,” and she is well-known for her work on social issues, ranging from LGBTQ+ rights to racial inequality to gender and pay equity.
She also was one of the first white professional athletes to show solidarity with Colin Kaepernick’s silent protest against police brutality and the first to do so on an international stage. She has caught hell for that ever since.
Rapinoe and her partner, WNBA star Sue Bird, were also the first openly gay couple to appear on the cover of ESPN the Magazine’s Body Issue.
As for the USWNT, they will have a chance to silence its critics in 2027.
