US soccer captain again rejects White House visit, saying team does not want to be ‘corrupted’
photo above: Megan Rapinoe and team during the Broadway ticker tape parade. Photograph: Mike Segar/Reuters
WN: Bottom line: Trump is Scapegoater-in-Chief — the Ultimately Deplorable Ugly American — as are unwittingly or cynically his supporters. Megan Rapinoe tells it like it is. Trump is telling it like it should never be.
excerpts:
The US women’s soccer co-captain Megan Rapinoe has delivered an uncompromising message to Donald Trump, amid ongoing controversy over a possible visit to the White House by the World Cup champions.
Asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper what she would like to say to the American leader, Rapinoe said: “Your message is excluding people. You’re excluding me, you’re excluding people that look like me, you’re excluding people of colour, you’re excluding Americans that maybe support you.”
Rapinoe has been outspoken about LGBT rights as well as racial and gender equality. After the US won the World Cup for a record fourth time on Sunday, Rapinoe called for progress on equal pay for the male and female teams.
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“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.
She added that allowing the White House to “put us on display” didn’t “make sense for us at all”, adding: “There are so many other people that I would rather talk to and have meaningful conversations that could really affect change in Washington than going to the White House.”
The sports star added the US needed to have a “reckoning” with the implications of Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan. “You’re harking back to an era that was not great for everyone – it might have been great for a few people, and maybe America is great for a few people right now, but it’s not great for enough Americans in this world.”
She added: “You have an incredible responsibility as the chief of this country to take care of every single person, and you need to do better for everyone.”
Please click on: Trump Message Deplorable
