Donald Trump blames ‘leftist maniacs’ for USA’s bronze medal in women’s football at Tokyo Olympics

Former US president Donald Trump has lashed his country’s women’s football team for being too “woke” after they won bronze at the Tokyo Olympics.

The number-one ranked Americans suffered a shock 1-0 loss to Canada in the semi-finals, before beating Australia 4-3 to claim bronze.

It was a moderate underperformance for a country that has claimed four previous Olympic gold medals, but Mr Trump put the blame on the perceived personal politics of some of the players.

“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,” Mr Trump said in a statement released on Twitter by his chief spokeswoman.

Mr Trump himself remains banned from all major social media.

“Woke means you lose, everything that is woke goes bad, and our soccer team certainly has,” he said.

“There were, however, a few Patriots standing.

“Unfortunately, they need more than that respecting our Country and National Anthem.”

The majority of the US team has knelt before each game at the Olympics to support the fight against racism, but 39-year-old striker Carli Lloyd remained standing before the game against the Matildas.

The IOC said before the Games that athletes wouldn’t be sanctioned for expressing their opinions as long as they aren’t disruptive, don’t single out specific people or countries and don’t take place during medal ceremonies.

Mr Trump suggested some squad changes ahead of the next major tournament, the World Cup in Australia in 2023.

“They should replace the wokesters with Patriots and start winning again,” he said.

He also appeared to single out 2019 Ballon D’Or winner Megan Rapinoe for criticism.

“The woman with the purple hair played terribly and spends too much time thinking about Radical Left politics and not doing her job!” he said.

apinoe, who has often spoken out against racism, in support of LGBTQI+ rights and advocated for equal pay for female footballers, scored two superb goals for the USA in the 4-3 win.

The former president and Rapinoe have exchanged words in the past, with the footballer famously recorded on video saying “I’m not going to the f***ing White House” before the 2019 World Cup when asked if she was looking forward to visiting if they won.

She told The Guardian that same year: “‘We’re everything Trump loves – except that we’re powerful women.”

In her post-match comments, Rapinoe said the team had played with joy again following on from the disappointment against Canada.

“Oh my gosh, I mean so much more [joy],” she said..

“We’ve done, as you can imagine, lots of talking in meetings and hashing it all out and doing the autopsy.

“I feel like we just got to a good place.”