Rapinoe hits back at Trump: ‘You’re rooting for people to do bad?’

U.S. soccer star Megan Rapinoe hit back at former President Trump’s claim that the women’s national team would have won the gold instead of bronze at the Olympics if they weren’t “woke,” questioning why the ex-commander-in-chief was “rooting for people to do bad.” 

Rapinoe, who scored a pair of goals to helped lead the U.S. team to its 4-3 victory over Australia to secure the bronze medal, was asked in a Friday interview with Jack Doles, a reporter for NBC affiliate WOOD-TV, if she had seen Trump’s statement issued the day before. 

Trump said in the message shared by his Save America PAC, “Woke means you lose, everything that is woke goes bad, and our soccer team certainly has.” 

“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,” he said. 

While Rapinoe confirmed that she had seen the statement, she let out a laugh and explained that she did not have much to say in response to the former president, whom Rapinoe has not been shy about criticizing in the past. 

“It’s a real sad dig into an old bag,” the athlete said of Trump’s statement. “I’m just like, ‘You’re rooting for people to do bad?’ Yikes.”

Trump in his statement specifically took aim at Rapinoe, writing, “The woman with the purple hair played terribly and spends too much time thinking about Radical Left politics and not doing her job!” 

Rapinoe, who scored a rare Olimpico goal from a corner kick in the team’s bronze medal match against Australia, said that while the team’s run at the Tokyo Olympics was not “the tournament we wanted,” she was proud of their work in the final game. 

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

The 36-year-old soccer player has previously sparred with Trump, calling herself a “walking protest” to his policies and in 2019, as the team worked toward its eventual World Cup win, said she was “not going to the f—ing White House” if invited by Trump. 

Trump responded to her at the time with a tweet, writing, “Megan should win before she talks.”

Rapinoe has also used her platform to speak out against the gender pay gap and to demand fair wages from the U.S. Soccer Federation, including by kneeling during the national anthem. 

Trump, who has picked fights with football star Colin Kaepernick and other athletes for taking a knee during the anthem, said Thursday that while the U.S. women’s soccer team had “a few Patriots standing,” they “need more than that respecting our Country and National Anthem.”