Megan Rapinoe calls out Trump: 'Your message is excluding people'
Megan Rapinoe has some blunt words for Donald Trump.
In an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper on Tuesday night, Rapinoe was asked what message she would share with Trump.
"Your message is excluding people. You're excluding me, you're excluding people that look like me, you're excluding people of color, you're excluding Americans that maybe support you," the World Cup champion said in response.
Rapinoe continued to explain, "we need to have a reckoning," and addressed Trump directly, adding, "you're harking back to an era that was not great for everyone — it might have been great for a few people, and maybe America is great for a few people right now, but it's not great for enough Americans in this world."
"You have an incredible responsibility as the chief of this country to take care of every single person, and you need to do better for everyone," Rapinoe said.
If you've been keeping up with World Cup news over the past few weeks, you may recall various Trump/Rapinoe headlines.
In June, after Rapinoe was seen saying, "I'm not going to the fucking White House. No. I'm not going the White House. We're not gonna be invited," in a video shared by Eight by Eight magazine, Trump attempted to pick a fight with her on Twitter.
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The president fired off three tweets to address Rapinoe's comments, and said the player shouldn't disrespect the country, the White House, and the American flag. (It's also worth noting that he tagged another Megan, not Rapinoe.)
After the tweets, things escalated when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez invited Rapinoe and the team to visit the House of Representatives. Rapinoe enthusiastically replied, "Consider it done."
Then, on July 2, Rapinoe's partner, Sue Bird, wrote an article for The Players' Tribune titled, "So the President F*cking Hates My Girlfriend." In it, Bird shared what it felt like to see Trump go "Full Adolescent Boy" on Rapinoe.
In his initial tweets, Trump invited the team to the White House "win or lose," but days after Bird's article published he appeared to backtrack on that promise. "We haven’t really thought about it,” Trump said when asked about an invite, per Voice of America. "We’ll look at that."
After the women won the World Cup, Trump congratulated them on Twitter, saying, "America is proud of you all." Unsurprisingly, the single tweet doesn't seem to have changed Rapinoe's feelings about the president.
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Rapinoe, who came out publicly in 2012, is a huge advocate for LGBTQ and women's rights. She has been very vocal about social justice issues in the past as well as equal pay during this World Cup. Trump and his administration, on the other hand, have made the LGBTQ community feel particularly excluded in the years since he took office, so it's clear why Rapinoe isn't the biggest fan.
When speaking to Anderson Cooper, Rapinoe confirmed her decision not to visit the White House, saying, "I would not go, and every teammate that I've talked to explicitly about it would not go."
"I don't think anyone on the team has any interest in lending the platform that we've worked so hard to build, and the things that we fight for, and the way that we live our life — I don't think that we want that to be co-opted or corrupted by this administration," she said.
Topics Social Good Donald Trump Politics
Nicole is a Senior Editor at Mashable. She primarily covers entertainment and digital culture trends, and in her free time she can be found watching TV, sending voice notes, or going viral on Twitter for admiring knitwear. You can follow her on Twitter @nicolemichele5.
