(Screenshot from Twitter)
PHOENIX | In a two-hour rambling address to an audience of approximately 5,000 plus at the Arizona Federal Theater July 24, former President Donald Trump attacked fellow Republicans including his former Vice-President Mike Pence and also bizarrely attacked the U.S Women’s Olympic Soccer Team.
He also praised the highly criticized “audit” of Arizona’s 2020 election data suggesting that it and other state audits would return him the presidency.
The U.S Women’s Olympic Soccer Team is led by co-captain 35-year-old out lesbian Megan Rapinoe who gained the former president’s enmity as an LGBTQ and civil rights activist. Rapinoe was early supporter of Black Lives Matter and earned Trump’s disdain she took a knee during the national anthem in 2016 in solidarity with former San Francisco 49ers player Colin Kaepernick.
Her feuding with the former president really ignited in 2019 when a reporter for the soccer magazine Eight by Eight asked Rapinoe if she’d be attending a ceremony at the White House as co-captain of U.S. women’s national soccer team, if the team won the World Cup.
Her answer was blunt, “I’m not going to the fucking White House,” she said. Trump responded with “Megan should WIN before she TALKS,” on his now-banned Twitter account and afterwards there were further harsh exchanges between the two on the social media platform.
At the rally in Phoenix, dubbed the “Rally to Protect Our Elections,” hosted by conservative group Turning Point USA’s PAC, Trump took aim at the Women’s Team who had suffered a significant rare 3-0 loss to the Swedish Women’s Team this past week.
Trump bemoaning the loss encouraged the hyped-up crowd to boo the U.S. Women’s soccer team. “Wokeism makes you lose,” he said. “The US Women’s Soccer team is a very good example of what’s going on,” he added as some in the crowd started to boo.
“Woke politics takes the life and joy out of everything. Woke-ism makes you lose, ruins your mind and ruins you as a person. You become warped. You become demented,” he said.
“Earlier this week, [the women’s team] unexpectedly lost to Sweden, three to nothing, and Americans were happy about it,” Trump told the crowd, who responded by cheering. “You proved that point before I even said it,” Trump added to the audience, shaking his head.
Trump’s introduction at the “Rally to Protect Our Elections” in Phoenix is beyond parody pic.twitter.com/TPKlsZ3yev
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 24, 2021
Dan Wetzel, the Yahoo Sports national columnist noted that even as criticism of the team mounted after the loss to Sweden, Rapinoe read and heard plenty of it.
“I know what it is,” she said. “I’m on social media. I’m not a hermit.”
Yet her reaction to waves of criticism was that it didn’t bother her. She sort of liked it, actually- she was heartened by it even, Wetzel wrote adding that “part of that is Rapinoe being Rapinoe; she puts herself out there and has never shied away from a fight. Part of it is that she sees the reaction as an unlikely sign of respect not just for this powerhouse team, but women’s sports in general.”
“I always welcome the criticism,” Rapinoe said Saturday after the U.S. responded by blitzing New Zealand, 6-1, to keep its gold medal hopes in play. “For women’s sports, criticism in the media still needs to get better.”
Back in Phoenix Trump’s tirade also included a bizarre rant where he speculated that the Los Angeles Lakers basketball’s team superstar LeBron James might get sex reassignment surgery and transition to being female.
Casting himself in a hypothetical role of a coach on a woman’s basketball team Trump in a transphobic way noted he would only recruit transgender athletes. “If I were a coach, I wouldn’t be talking to too many women as we know women,” he said. “I’d be getting some of these people that say they’re ‘women.”
“Somebody said that if LeBron James ever decided to get the operation, how would he be on the court? How would he be?” Trump said. Although James is absent in Olympic play, the U.S. Men’s Basketball Team suffered a loss to the French national team 83-76.
“LeBron James, you can have him,” Trump continued. “Did you see the basketball ratings that were terrible? They went up after his team was defeated.”
