Megan Rapinoe hits back at Trump for not backing US team: ‘You’re rooting for people to do bad? Yikes’

Former president has attacked Rapinoe as ‘the woman with the purple hair’

American soccer star Megan Rapinoe has hit back at Donald Trump’s claim Team USA would have won a gold medal if they were not so “woke.”

The USWNT player scored twice as her side won a bronze medal with a 4-3 victory over Australia at the Tokyo Olympics.

The one-term president, who has publicly sparred with Rapinoe, attacked the women’s team in a message shared by his Save America PAC, saying “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.”

Asked about his comments, Rapinoe said: “It’s a real sad dig into an old bag.

“I’m just like, ‘You’re rooting for people to do bad?’ Yikes.”

Mr Trump singled out 36-year-old Rapinoe in his statement, adding: “The woman with the purple hair played terribly and spends too much time thinking about Radical Left politics and not doing her job!”

In 2019, Rapinoe said that she was ““not going to the f***ing White House” if invited by Mr Trump to celebrate the USWNT World Cup win.

Rapinoe has been an outspoken voice on the gender pay gap and has demanded fair pay from the US Soccer Federation.

She has also kneeled for the national anthem to protest racial injustice issues, which has been a lightning rod for Mr Trump and his supporters.

Rapinoe said that despite it not being “the tournament we wanted” after being knocked out in the semi-final by Canada, she was proud of the team’s achievements in Japan.

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