Yahoo News Trump brands US women’s soccer team ‘leftist maniacs’ and targets Megan Rapinoe’s hair in wild rant
Former President Donald Trump has gone after the US women’s soccer team after they failed to make the gold medal game and won a bronze at the Tokyo Olympics.
“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,” Mr Trump said in a statement sent to reporters.
“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,” he added.
“They should replace the wokesters with Patriots and start winning again. The woman with the purple hair played terribly and spends too much time thinking about Radical Left politics and not doing her job!” he said as he finished off his rant.
The player Mr Trump referred to as “the woman with the purple hair” is Megan Rapinoe, who scored twice in Team USA’s 4-3 win over Australia to clinch the bronze on Thursday.
The US team arrived in Tokyo aiming to get the gold but lost 1-0 to Canada in the semifinal. Their bronze medal was won with the help of two of the team’s oldest players, Ms Rapinoe and Carli Lloyd, 36 and 39 years old respectively, who both scored twice.
“That bronze means so much,” US captain Becky Sauerbrunn said according to The New York Times. “It feels like we really had to earn that thing. And we’re very proud of it.”
“We got slapped in the face and then really couldn’t find our way,” Ms Lloyd said about the start of the Olympic tournament. The US lost by 3-0 to Sweden in their first game.
The day after losing the semifinal, the players held a meeting on Tuesday to clear the air.
“Obviously we wanted to get a gold medal,” Ms Sauerbrunn added. “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.’”
Following the loss to Canada, many pro-Trump conservatives took to social media to blast the team and Ms Rapinoe in particular, blaming their elimination on their progressive politics.
Many cited the team’s past public stances against racial injustice. One of the critics was Ben Shapiro, who tweeted: “They’re still the champions at kneeling though, which is the important thing.”
“The US Women’s Soccer Team went WOKE and now they lost to Canada,” Brigitte Gabriel wrote. “That’s what happens when you put political propaganda before sport and hard work.”
A blogger on pro-Trump commentator Wayne Dupree’s website wrote: “Little Ms Purple Hair and her team of woke warriors fell flat on their faces.”
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