Megyn Kelly and other right-wing commentators are claiming that Megan Rapinoe’s progressive activism is bringing down the performance of the U.S. soccer team in the Women’s World Cup.
On Wednesday’s episode of Kelly’s podcast, The Megyn Kelly Show, she and her guests blasted the team for celebrating a 0-0 tie with Portugal Tuesday. The tie, however, allowed the U.S. team to advance to the knockout, or elimination, round. The U.S. will play Sweden in that round Sunday.
“These morons on the women’s soccer team continue to embarrass us on the national stage,” Kelly said on the podcast. After the tie, “they’re celebrating out there like they’ve just won the whole thing,” she said. “They won’t sing the national anthem. Half of them won’t put their hands over their hearts. Even the ones who are singing are half-assing it. They clearly don’t want to be doing it. I mean, they look like they don’t even want to be there. It’s like some sort of inconvenience to be representing the USA.”She then played a clip of Fox Sports analyst Carli Lloyd, a former member of the team, calling its performance “uninspiring” and “lackluster.” “It started to shift post-2020,” Lloyd said. “I just think there are a lot of off-the-field things that are happening.”
Megyn Kelly and other right-wing commentators are claiming that Megan Rapinoe’s progressive activism is bringing down the performance of the U.S. soccer team in the Women’s World Cup.
On Wednesday’s episode of Kelly’s podcast, The Megyn Kelly Show, she and her guests blasted the team for celebrating a 0-0 tie with Portugal Tuesday. The tie, however, allowed the U.S. team to advance to the knockout, or elimination, round. The U.S. will play Sweden in that round Sunday.
“These morons on the women’s soccer team continue to embarrass us on the national stage,” Kelly said on the podcast. After the tie, “they’re celebrating out there like they’ve just won the whole thing,” she said. “They won’t sing the national anthem. Half of them won’t put their hands over their hearts. Even the ones who are singing are half-assing it. They clearly don’t want to be doing it. I mean, they look like they don’t even want to be there. It’s like some sort of inconvenience to be representing the USA.”
She then played a clip of Fox Sports analyst Carli Lloyd, a former member of the team, calling its performance “uninspiring” and “lackluster.” “It started to shift post-2020,” Lloyd said. “I just think there are a lot of off-the-field things that are happening.”
Kelly commented, “2020, that was post-George Floyd [the Black man killed by Minneapolis police], when you had the Megan Rapinoes of the world saying we’re not singing the national anthem, we’re all taking a knee, we’ll never sing the national anthem again.” The team “won’t respect our country … and yet they celebrate themselves like crazy,” she said.
Rapinoe actually began taking a knee in 2016 as a protest against racism and in support of NFL player Colin Kaepernick, who was doing so and receiving backlash for it. The lesbian star has also been outspoken for equal play for women, transgender rights, and other progressive causes.National Review reporter Caroline Downey agreed with Kelly’s criticism. Although she admitted to being “sports-illiterate,” she said the U.S. team is “clearly settling for mediocrity.” She claimed the team’s performance has declined from previous World Cups because the players are “prioritizing other issues” and “investing a lot of energy into woke things,” using the right’s word of choice these days. She went on to slam Rapinoe for saying she’d welcome a trans player to the team. “Clearly she’s not convinced of the overwhelming physical advantages that men have,” Downey said.
Kelly said Rapinoe “is the leader in all this.” She noted that Rapinoe is not on camera during the national anthem because she’s not a starter in this World Cup; Rapinoe had announced that she would have a reduced role and was planning to retire at the end of the year, making this her last World Cup. “She’s poisoned the entire team against the country for which they play,” Kelly said. She said she’s not rooting for the U.S. women and hopes they lose.
Another guest, Will Witt, acknowledged he knew nothing about women’s soccer and had to look everything up, but he likewise criticized the U.S. team. “This team reminds me of the Republican Party in America. It’s full of losers, and they love losing is what it seems like,” said Witt, editor in chief of The Florida Standard, a conservative publication.He contended that the team’s performance is symptomatic of much American culture. “They’re fine with mediocrity, they’re fine with foreigners coming in and eating our lunch here in America, they’re fine with sending our jobs overseas so that they can work cushy jobs and that working hard is a relic of the past,” he said. “That’s what it seems like this team is doing.”
Kelly concluded, “It’s shameful. These girls are shameful. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.”
So far there’s no record of a response to Kelly’s show by Rapinoe or anyone connected with the team. Co-captain Lindsey Horan, however, responded to Lloyd’s critique. “It’s kinda frustrating for me to hear,” Horan said, according to Yahoo! Sports. “Especially knowing this team and knowing how much we put into every single game, how much preparation we put into every single game, seeing our trainings, seeing how hard we work.”Head coach Vlatko Andonovski also countered Lloyd, saying, “To question the mentality of this team, to question the willingness to win, to compete, I think it’s insane.”
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