Former President Trump slammed the US women’s national soccer team, stating that if the girls weren’t “woke,” they would have won gold instead of bronze at the Olympics.

“If our soccer team, headed by a radical group of Leftist Maniacs, wasn’t woke, they would have won the Gold medal instead of the Bronze,” he said.

“Woke means you lose, everything that is woke goes bad, and our soccer team certainly has. There were, however, a few Patriots standing. Unfortunately, they need more than that respecting our Country and National Anthem,” he continued. Before games at the Olympics, the USWNT and other teams knelt to bring attention to racial injustice. They stood for the national anthem after that.

“They should replace the wokesters with Patriots and start winning again,” Trump added.

The United States Women’s National Team entered the event as one of the favorites to win, having done so four times before. Vlatko Andonovski’s squad was eliminated in the semi-finals after losing to Canada, but they went on to win the bronze medal with a 4-3 victory against Australia.

Megan Rapinoe, one of the team’s best players, was also singled out by Trump, who referred to her as “the woman with purple hair.” Despite scoring two of the US’s four goals, including a rare corner-kick goal known as a “Olímpico,” he stated she played “terribly.”

Trump has a history with the women’s national team of the United States. “We’re everything Trump loves – except that we’re powerful women,” Rapinoe told the Guardian in 2019. She had enraged Trump earlier that year when she said, “I’m not going to the fucking White House” if the United States won the World Cup that summer. The squad went on to win the trophy, but skipped the customary trip to visit the president following their victory.

“Considering how much time and effort and pride we take in the platform we have, using it for good and leaving the game in a better place and hopefully the world in a better place, I don’t think I would want to go,” Rapinoe said of the decision.

“Megan should win before she talks,” Trump said on Twitter, which has subsequently barred him from accessing the platform.

Megan has been a vocal opponent of Trump in the past, labeling him a white nationalist last year.

During a rally in Arizona last month, Trump said something similar about “wokeism” as he cheered the US team’s loss to Sweden.

“Wokeism makes you lose, ruins your mind, and ruins you as a person. You become warped. You become demented,” Trump said at the time. “The US women’s soccer team is a very good example of what’s going on.”

Trump has a history of picking battles with politically active athletes, including Colin Kaepernick, who was a prominent focus when the then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback took a knee to protest racial injustice.

During Trump’s administration, he made many verbal assaults on athletes, the most of whom were black, female, or both. In response to a chat the two men had about Trump’s attacks on black athletes, he labeled NFL players who peacefully protested during the national anthem “sons of bitches,” and in 2018, he tweeted that CNN presenter Don Lemon “made Lebron [James] look smart, which isn’t easy to do.”

Rapinoe said that the US women’s soccer team “just didn’t have our juice” during the game on Thursday, but added that the squad found its “joy” and “freedom” throughout the match.

“Eventually, we’ll have to do the debrief and figure out why we played five bad games and had one good game in the tournament,” she added.

“That bronze means so much,” team captain Becky Sauerbrunn said from Tokyo.

“It feels like we really had to earn that thing,” she added, according to The New York Times. “And we’re very proud of it.”