When the United States misplaced to Sweden within the Women’s World Cup on Sunday, many American viewers noticed it as a painful collapse on the grandest stage — the kind of agonizing second that occurs in sports activities.
For former President Donald J. Trump, it was an indication of nationwide decline.
The loss was “fully emblematic of what is happening to the our once great Nation under Crooked Joe Biden,” Mr. Trump wrote on his social media platform.
“Many of our players were openly hostile to America — No other country behaved in such a manner, or even close,” he added. “WOKE EQUALS FAILURE. Nice shot Megan, the USA is going to Hell!!! MAGA.”
The taunt was an extension of a longstanding feud between Mr. Trump and Megan Rapinoe, the retiring soccer star who as soon as refused to go to the Trump White House, and whose missed penalty kick contributed to the workforce’s loss. (After the sport, Ms. Rapinoe summed up the miss as a kind of “sick joke.”)
But it was additionally a putting instance of the unforgiving second in right-wing politics, when a former president will taunt an American workforce competing on the nationwide stage and relish the agony of its defeat.
President Biden congratulated the workforce on Twitter: “I’m looking forward to seeing how you continue to inspire Americans with your grit and determination — on and off the field.”
“Your unwavering support means a lot to us,” the workforce stated to its followers on Sunday. “Our goal remains the same, to win.”
Criticism of the workforce was widespread within the on-line right-wing ecosystem even earlier than its loss.
Megyn Kelly, the podcast host, stated that Ms. Rapinoe had “poisoned the entire team against the country for which they play” forward of the sport.
The right-wing activist Brigitte Gabriel wrote late final month, “I love America and that’s why I am rooting against the woke U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team this year.”
Richard Lapchick, the president of the Institute for Sport and Social Justice, drew a parallel between Mr. Trump’s assault on Ms. Rapinoe and his assaults in 2017 on N.F.L. gamers who, impressed by Colin Kaepernick, knelt for the nationwide anthem to protest racial inequality and police brutality.
After Mr. Trump’s criticism six years in the past, “what was seemingly a dimming protest movement in the N.F.L. was suddenly reignited so that they had even owners and coaches” expressing help, Dr. Lapchick stated.
“I think that his doing this again this week will reinforce the base of athlete activism that I think has grown significantly stronger in the last couple of years,” he stated.
The conservative criticism has been centered on each Ms. Rapinoe’s political statements — together with her help of homosexual and transgender rights, which Mr. Trump has attacked — and the ladies’s nationwide workforce’s struggle for pay fairness. Mr. Trump and others disparage these stances as “woke,” the suitable’s catchall shorthand for progressive views on gender, race and different points.
A current article in The Washington Examiner, a conservative publication, accused the ladies’s nationwide soccer workforce of showing “far more concerned pushing a woke agenda regarding equal pay for female athletes and the rights of L.G.B.T. citizens than they have been with winning games.”
Ms. Rapinoe has been a goal of the suitable since at the least 2019, when she refused to go to the White House after the United States received the final Women’s World Cup. Mr. Trump criticized her on the time. She has lengthy been outspoken, and she or he is among the many athletes who’ve knelt for the nationwide anthem.
While “anti-woke” assaults have reliably stirred the right-wing base, a current New York Times/Siena College ballot signifies that they don’t replicate most voters’ priorities.
A minority of the presidential candidates, together with former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota and former Representative Will Hurd of Texas, have urged Republicans to deal with concrete issues like inflation.
Then once more, so has Mr. Trump — to some extent.
“I don’t like the term ‘woke,’” he stated in Iowa in June, including, “It’s just a term they use — half the people can’t even define it, they don’t know what it is.”
Mary Jo Kane, a professor emerita and founding father of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport on the University of Minnesota, urged that the mere existence of Mr. Trump’s newest assault was “a reflection of the growth and the power and the significance of a cultural moment of women’s sports.”
“The fact that the former president of the United States is commenting on women’s sports — nobody used to comment on women’s sports,” she stated. “The fact that this has become yet another arena that is culturally contested and commented on is, ironically and unwittingly, a demonstration of the role of women’s sports in our society.”
Source: www.nytimes.com