U.S. soccer captain Megan Rapinoe said in a Tuesday interview that President Donald Trump is excluding people, including those that look like her.
“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,” she said in the CNN interview when asked what her message would be to Trump if he were watching the program.
Rapinoe also said that the President was not making America great for everyone but rather for a small group of people only, “harking back to an era that was not great for everyone.” She further told Trump that as the chief of the country he had the responsibility to take care of every citizen and “be better for everyone.”
As for the criticism Rapinoe has been getting for kneeling during the anthem, she said it was “very uniquely American” to stand up for yourself and others if they cannot stand up for themselves.
“I don’t think anybody can deny the horrors of racism and Jim Crow and mass incarceration and what’s happening on the southern border and gay right and women’s rights. I don’t quite understand where the miss is because I think a lot of the people that disagree with me would benefit greatly from a world that is better for everyone,” she continued.
Asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper whether she would visit Capitol Hill after being invited by Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rapinoe said, “Yes, definitely. And I think even in just conversations with the teammates that I’ve had, I think everyone is interested in going to Washington. I think we’ve always been interested in going to Washington.”
Rapinoe became a soccer star after she led her team’s undefeated run to win the World Cup on Sunday and fighting for pay equal to the men’s soccer team, which 28 U.S. Women’s National Team players demanded in a lawsuit.
During the interview, the soccer captain also said that she stood by her earlier comments that should her team win they would not go the White House, comments that led to her public clash with President Trump.
“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,” Rapinoe told Cooper.
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