Megan Rapinoe responds to Trump on criticism of the US women’s football team: “Do you encourage people to do wrong?”

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Megan Rapinoe called Trump’s criticism of the United States women’s football team a “sad dig.” Trump accused the team of being “awake” and not focusing on winning during their Olympic run. Rapinoe has publicly clashed with Trump in the past, rejecting a 2019 invitation to visit the White House.

American football star Megan Rapinoe responded on Friday to former President Donald Trump’s claim that the women’s national team would have won a gold instead of bronze at the Tokyo Olympics if they hadn’t. been “awakened”.

In an interview with NBC, Rapinoe, who helped the team take the 4-3 victory over Australia to take home the bronze medal, was asked to comment on whether she had seen Trump’s statement lashing out at the team. The former president, in a statement released by his Save America PAC, accused soccer players of being “awake” and not focusing on winning.

“Wake up means you lose, everything that is awake is wrong, and our football team certainly did,” he said. “If our football team, led by a radical group of maniacal leftists, had not been awakened, they would have won the gold instead of the bronze.”

On Monday, the US team was beaten by Canada 1-0 in a semi-final game, putting them out of the race for the Olympic gold medal. The Canadian team beat Sweden and won gold.

Rapinoe, who in 2019 fought with Trump after rejecting an invitation to visit the White House to mark the team’s FIFA World Cup victory, said she had heard of the statement from the former president but had little to offer in response.

“It’s a really sad dig in an old bag,” she said of Trump’s comments. “I’m just like ‘Do you encourage people to do wrong?’ Ouch.”

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In his statement, Trump took direct aim at Rapinoe, who helped the team win a gold medal at the London 2012 Olympics and was a key member of the team in their Women’s World Cup victories in FIFA 2015 and 2019.

“The woman with the purple hair has played terribly and spends too much time thinking about the politics of the radical left and not doing her job!” he said.

Rapinoe, who scored a rare corner goal known as “Olimpico” in the game against Australia, said that while the team didn’t experience “the tournament we wanted” in Tokyo, she was proud of the team’s efforts in the final. Game.

“The performance we had in the last game is what we want to be and that’s who we are,” she said.

In 2019, Rapinoe saw herself as a “walking protest” on Trump’s agenda, and as the team worked on their eventual World Cup victory that year, they rejected any sort of invitation to the White House and said she “was not going to the f– —- White House ‘to celebrate.

While Rapinoe later apologized for her language, she did not shy away from his criticism of Trump.

Trump responded to her on Twitter at the time, saying that she “should win before she speaks.”

Rapinoe has been very outspoken on equity issues, including tackling the gender pay gap and firmly supporting the Black Lives Matter movement.

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