While the U.S. women’s national soccer team celebrated their World Cup victory with a ticker-tape parade in New York on Wednesday morning, Fox News host Howard Kurtz complained that captain Megan Rapinoe had ruined a “great unifying moment” by not being nice to President Donald Trump.
Appearing on Fox’s America’s Newsroom, the MediaBuzz host reacted to Rapinoe’s Tuesday night CNN interview in which the Golden Ball winner accused Trump of “excluding” people of color and the LGBT community with his “Make America Great Again” message.
Kurtz blasted Rapinoe for taking a “divisive approach to just about everything,” and lamented that the victory had “the potential to be this wonderful unifying moment” for America before once again bashing the team captain.
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“But she has just been constantly giving interviews dissing Donald Trump, dissing the White House, dissing the national anthem,” Kurtz, a former Daily Beast columnist, groused. “I think that is a shame. She is happy to accept an invitation to go on the Hill from [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], but really attacking the president.”
Co-anchor Bill Hemmer then weighed in, wondering why Rapinoe—who is openly gay—believes the president excludes people like her, claiming that she has really only ever brought up one specific issue: Equal pay.
“She is very liberal, and she can’t stand this president,” Kurtz declared. “She is using the platform, I’m sorry to say this, but to mar or spoil or tar what could have been a great unifying moment.”
Hemmer followed up by asking “what the other players think,” wondering if maybe “they would like to go to the White House” and asserting that we “don’t really hear from them.”
Prior to their World Cup final, player Alex Morgan said that the team would make a collective decision on whether they’d visit the White House. During her CNN interview, Rapinoe—who previously said she wouldn’t go to the “fucking White House”—stated that every teammate she talked to said they “would not go,” insisting they don’t want their platform to be “co-opted and corrupted” by Trump.
