Megan Rapinoe Doubles Down On Criticism Of Donald Trump, Encourages Teammates Not To Meet With Him
U.S. Women’s Soccer star Megan Rapinoe said on Thursday that she stands by earlier comments she made about Donald Trump, including saying that she wouldn’t attend the customary post-championship meeting with the president.
As Yahoo Sports reports, there’s been a war of words going on between the 33-year-old forward and the POTUS. It erupted a couple of days ago when Trump criticized Rapinoe for not putting her hand over her heart during the national anthem. Then, a months-old video surfaced in which Rapinoe said if her team wins the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup (and they are heavy favorites to do so), she wouldn’t attend the customary post-championship visit to the White House.
Specifically, she said, “I’m not going to the f—ing White House.”
In response, Trump said that the women were invited, win or lose.
On Thursday, Megan and her teammates took questions at a press conference ahead of their Friday match with France. Not surprisingly, the topic of the ongoing political controversy came up. Megan made it clear that she was willing to discuss it, briefly, but she was more interested in talking about soccer, which is why she was there in the first place.
On the subject of what she said about Trump, she didn’t back down.
“I stand by the comments that I made about not wanting to go to the White House with exception of the expletive,” Megan Rapinoe said in response to Trump's tweet. “My mom would be very upset about that.” https://t.co/7b2Z5mAhGO
— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 27, 2019
She didn’t stop there as she also encouraged her teammates to skip the meeting.
“I would encourage my teammates to think hard about lending that platform or having it co-opted by an administration that doesn’t feel the same way or fight for the same things that we fight for,” she said.
At least two of Megan’s teammates won’t be meeting with Donald Trump, either. As reported Wednesday by The Inquisitr, Ali Krieger responded to Trump’s invitation with a tweet, in which she accused Trump of not being able to withstand being in the company of women whom he can’t control or grope. Similarly, in May, Alex Morgan told Time that she doesn’t “stand for a lot of things the current office stands for,” and so she wouldn’t accept an offer to meet Trump.
Although athletes have been declining opportunities to visit with a president for decades, Donald Trump has seen more than his share of championship-winning athletes declining invitations to the White House, including one whole team, the Golden State Warriors. Similarly, when the Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl, Trump chose not to invite the entire team, claiming that they didn’t want to be there anyway.
