USA women’s soccer star Megan Rapinoe has hit back at criticism she and the team received from Donald Trump, questioning why the former president was ‘rooting for people to do bad’.
In a bizarre rant made earlier this week, Trump described the US squad at the Tokyo Olympics as a ‘radical group of leftist maniacs’ and and called for the ‘wokesters’ to be replaced with Patriots in order to win more matches.
The comments were made following USA’s 1-0 defeat to Canada which saw the team miss out on a place in this summer’s final. The Stars and Stripes did, though, go on to beat Australia to secure bronze at the Games.
Trump argued that the side’s semi-final loss was down to the their apparent wokeness and blasted his fellow Americans for taking the knee during their national anthem – which wasn’t even the case. Fake news, you could say.
‘If our soccer team, headed by a radical group of leftist maniacs, wasn’t woke, they would have won the gold medal instead of the bronze,’ the ex-commander in-chief said.
‘Woke means you lose, everything that is woke goes bad, and our soccer team certainly has. There were, however, a few Patriots standing. Unfortunately, they need more than that respecting our country and national anthem.
‘They should replace the wokesters with Patriots and start winning again.’
An irate Trump reserved special criticism for Rapinoe, who he labelled ‘the woman with the purple hair’.
He added: ‘The woman with the purple hair played terribly and spends too much time thinking about radical left politics and not doing her job!’
Rapinoe – whose feud with Trump dates back to 2019 when she declined an invite to the White House – confirmed she was aware of his latest barb in the wake of the USA’s 4-3 victory over Australia.
But the 36-year-old, who scored twice in the win, wasn’t going to let Trump’s comments ruin the occasion.
‘It’s a real sad dig into an old bag,’ Rapinoe told reporter Jack Doles.
‘I’m just like, “You’re rooting for people to do bad?!” Yikes!’
Speaking after the bronze medal match, US captain Becky Sauerbrunn said she was ‘very proud’ but admitted her side perhaps ‘didn’t deserve’ to come away from the Games with gold.
‘That bronze means so much,’ she said.
‘It feels like we really had to earn that thing. And we’re very proud of it.
‘Obviously we wanted to get a gold medal. Everyone wants to get a gold medal, Americans love golds.
‘The fact is we potentially didn’t deserve to get a gold medal.
‘We had to change the goal, and it became, “Let’s get that bronze!”‘
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