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Megan Rapinoe Hits Back at Trump’s ‘Fake’ Critique of USWNT

“It’s just so disingenuous,” she said. “There’s no way for us to win, and there’s no way for us to lose.”

Megan Rapinoe and the U.S. Women’s National Team were subjected to some brutal criticism after their premature exit from the FIFA World Cup. Even former President Donald Trump—who has long beefed with the soccer star—got in on the action, seemingly taking glee in their loss. But Rapinoe is taking the criticism with a grain of salt. “What [Trump is] 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… I think, just in general, the way that our team was spoken about over the course of the tournament, it was fake,” she told The Atlantic. “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. 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.”