Women’s soccer star Megan Rapinoe was the recipient of brutal criticism when she was caught laughing after missing a critical overtime penalty kick against Sweden that sent the USA home early from the World Cup competition earlier this month and now she’s punching back at critics.
The 38-year-old Rapinoe, who has become as well-known for her political activism and multi-hued hair colors, could have put an exclamation point on her glorious soccer career by putting home an easy kick against Sweden but completely missed the net in a signature moment for a team that was criticized for a lack of focus.
Not only did the humiliating exit for the USWNT – the earliest ouster ever – bring shame upon the nation but the turquoise-haired lesbian added insult to injury when she snickered before leaving the field with her dejected teammates.In a recent interview with Franklin Foer of “The Atlantic,” the reporter who penned the notorious 2016 hoax story about a server inside Trump Tower secretly communicating with a Russian bank, Rapinoe discussed her team’s shocking early ouster and whined that the reaction was evidence of a “backlash” against women in general.
NEWS/COMMENTARY
Megan Rapinoe rips ‘absurd and outrageous’ criticism over laughing after missed penalty kick
August 24, 2023 | Chris Donaldson | Print Article
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Women’s soccer star Megan Rapinoe was the recipient of brutal criticism when she was caught laughing after missing a critical overtime penalty kick against Sweden that sent the USA home early from the World Cup competition earlier this month and now she’s punching back at critics.
The 38-year-old Rapinoe, who has become as well-known for her political activism and multi-hued hair colors, could have put an exclamation point on her glorious soccer career by putting home an easy kick against Sweden but completely missed the net in a signature moment for a team that was criticized for a lack of focus.
Not only did the humiliating exit for the USWNT – the earliest ouster ever – bring shame upon the nation but the turquoise-haired lesbian added insult to injury when she snickered before leaving the field with her dejected teammates.
In a recent interview with Franklin Foer of “The Atlantic,” the reporter who penned the notorious 2016 hoax story about a server inside Trump Tower secretly communicating with a Russian bank, Rapinoe discussed her team’s shocking early ouster and whined that the reaction was evidence of a “backlash” against women in general.
Asked what went through her mind before the fateful kick, the iconic winger replied, “I’m going to score. Honestly, something that has made me so successful in penalty kicks for so long is the acceptance and the realization that I will miss them. I miss them in training regularly. I’ve been lucky not to miss a lot in actual competition, but eventually, that can happen. But I love taking them. I would take them all the time. I would take that one again. I would pick me to take them.”
“For a long time, I have thought about missing one in a really big moment,” she said. “What are you going to do? The only other thing you could do is to not take one. I’m not going to do that. I would rather step up and be in that moment.”
“And I think that’s something that made the criticism after that loss particularly fake and disingenuous and absurd and outrageous to me. It’s like, you’re going to bash on me for getting out there and trying my best?” Rapinoe said of the criticism.
The subject, of course, turned to former President Donald J. Trump who blasted her after the career-defining missed kick.
“Nice shot Megan, the USA is going to Hell!!!” Trump wrote in a scathing Truth Social blast in which he said that her choking was “fully emblematic” of the decline of the country under President Joe Biden.
“Along these lines … your team was constantly forced to fight political battles, even when you’re not picking them. I’m thinking of Donald Trump’s post after you were knocked out by Sweden,” Foer remarked. “He said, ‘The shocking and totally unexpected loss by the US Women’s Soccer Team to Sweden is fully emblematic of what is happening to our once great nation under crooked Joe Biden.’ That’s hard to parse.”
“It always is, because what he’s saying is fake. It’s a compilation of hit words and hot-button words that don’t actually make any sort of sense or square with reality at all …,” Rapinoe responded.
“I think, just in general, the way that our team was spoken about over the course of the tournament, it was fake. And it didn’t make sense to me: In 2019, we were ultra-confident, ultra-swaggy—and won everything. And even though we won, we did it in bad taste, according to our critics,” she said. “This time, we weren’t confident enough, and we don’t have the right ‘mentality.’ And so we lost. It’s just so disingenuous. There’s no way for us to win, and there’s no way for us to lose.”
“One thing that America does really well is backlash. I think there’s a huge backlash against women happening right now,” Rapinoe told Foer. “I think we see that with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. We’re seeing that with the trans argument in sports.”
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