Predicting everything from ‘general chaos’ to a dystopian hell for transgender Americans, retired soccer star Megan Rapinoe slammed Donald Trump in her bleak forecast for the President-elect’s second term.
‘He’s telling everybody what he’s gonna do and it’s really dark and it’s really sad and I don’t think anybody wants to live like that,’ Rapinoe told her podcast and real-life partner, Sue Bird, on ‘A Touch More.’
Rapinoe has always been critical of Trump but sharpened her focus on the 45th President in 2022 when his hand-picked Supreme Court justices overturned Roe v. Wade, thereby pushing the debate over reproductive rights to the states.
And while the Ballon d’Or Féminin winner and World Cup champion admits she is not ‘personally scared’ about Trump’s second term, she is fearful for marginalized populations.
‘I am nervous, but I also am hopeful. I believe in people and I certainly believe in women and I believe that people want better than the grim, dark, just violent reality that Donald Trump has very clearly laid out for us,’ she said.
‘I feel overwhelmed by the reality that is going to be a Trump presidency, which we have seen before, so I don’t feel like I’m saying anything new, but the reality where anything crazy could happen any day, I think that is really overwhelming.
‘I think that I feel not so much personally scared, because I think that you know, we live in a very progressive place, we’re unbelievably privileged in our place in the world and life and, you know, financially and all of these things,’ she continued.
‘I think the fear extends to just people in general that will be really affected. I’m thinking of all my trans friends and people that I know and trans kids. I’m thinking about the potential of mass deportations if that is going to happen, and kind of just general chaos.’
During his presidential bid, Trump pledged to impose wide-ranging restrictions and roll back civil rights protections for transgender students. And his administration can swiftly start work on one major change: It can exclude transgender students from Title IX protections, which affect school policies on students’ use of pronouns, bathrooms and locker rooms.
One ad that aired over 15,000 times crystallized Trump’s stance on rights for transgender and nonbinary Americans: ‘Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.’
In the U.S., 3.3 percent of high school students identify as transgender and another 2.2 percent question their gender, according to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey released last month.
The survey found 72 percent of transgender and gender-questioning teens experienced persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness in the past year. These teens also reported higher rates of bullying at school compared with peers. About 1 in 4 transgender students said they had attempted suicide in the past year, the CDC said.
Rapinoe’s feud with Trump began in 2019 when she showed disdain for his presidency over a series of interviews.
Things escalated before, during, and after the FIFA Women’s World Cup in France where Rapinoe won the Golden Ball and Golden Boot awards as the tournament’s top scorer and most valuable player.
When asked about a potential White House visit, Rapinoe steadfastly refused, and she had Trump have been publicly feuding ever since.
