Megan Rapinoe cannot get to the White House fast enough following Biden & Harris' election

Megan Rapinoe cannot get to the White House fast enough following Biden & Harris’ election

Megan Rapinoe

With Joe Biden and Kamala Harris elected as next President and Vice President of the United States over the weekend, many American sporting stars were quick to express their support and excitement.

US women’s soccer team captain Megan Rapinoe was one of the first, tweeting a thank you to “Black Women”, the demographic of Americans most likely to have voted for Biden and Harris.

Rapinoe also tweeted that she couldn’t get to the White House fast enough to visit its new occupants, come January 2021.

“Update: I can’t get to the f**king White House fast enough now!!!” Rapinoe wrote on Twitter. It comes after she and the national team said they wouldn’t go to the White House to visit President Trump, after the team won the FIFA World Cup in 2019.

At the time, Trump warned her over Twitter not to “disrespect” America.

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President Elect Joe Biden has publicly shown his support for the team’s fight to secure an equal pay deal, tweeting in May that if he became President, the United States government would not provide the US Soccer Federation with funding for the World Cup, unless they awarded the women’s team equal pay.

Biden’s tweet came after a federal judge rejected the US women’s soccer teams’ claim that they had been underpaid relative to the US men’s team. At the time, Rapinoe said the team would never stop fighting for equality.

Megan Rapinoe has been a vocal critic of President Trump throughout his four-year term in government, claiming he is misogynistic and racist, and describing herself as a “walking protest”.

She was also one of the first high-profile American athletes to replicate NFL player Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling protest against police brutality and racism, when she took a knee during the country’s national anthem in 2016. Her actions saw the US Soccer Federation introduce a policy that banned players from protesting during the national anthem, a decision they repealed in June 2020, admitting the ban had “missed the point completely”.

President Elect Joe Biden also congratulated Rapinoe, and her fiancé Sue Bird on their engagement, tweeting a photo of the couple and writing “love always wins”.

Megan Rapinoe also offered specific congratulations to Vice President Elect Kamala Harris on her historic election, as the first woman and person of colour to be elected in the role.

“Cannot understate how historic and incredible this is for @KamalaHarris and for Black women and South Asian women everywhere, and for America,” she wrote.

“Let’s not look back, ever.”

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