Trump slams ‘woke’ US women’s team
Former United States president Donald Trump has issued an extraordinary rant at the US’s Olympic women’s football team, calling them ‘‘woke, left wing maniacs’’.
Trump sent out an official statement after watching the United States team – four-time Olympic gold medallists and current world champions – beat Australia 4-3 in the bronze medal match at Tokyo.
He claimed it was time ‘‘to replace the wokesters with Patriots’’.
‘‘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,’’ the statement issued by his official office said.
‘‘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. They should replace the wokesters with patriots and start winning again.’’
The US team has been kneeling before games as a mark of respect for the Black Lives Matter movement.
Trump has been embroiled in a feud with the US team’s star player Megan Rapinoe after she claimed before the side’s World Cup win in
2019 that ‘‘I’m not going to the f ..... g White House’’ for a presidential audience while Trump was in power.
Now, the former president has had another swipe at Rapinoe, who got two goals against Australia.
‘‘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 in his statement.
There has been no response yet to Trump’s tirade from Rapinoe, the US National Women’s Team or the US Soccer Federation.
However, Rapinoe has in the past dismissed Trump’s outbursts as ‘‘ridiculous and absurd’’, saying in
2019 that her team was ‘‘everything Trump loves – except that we’re powerful women’’.