U.S. soccer star Megan Rapinoe says she wants to meet AOC and Pelosi

U.S. soccer star Megan Rapinoe has said she will meet top Democrats including Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – but repeated her insistence that she will not meet President Donald Trump. 

Accusing the president of ‘excluding’ gay people such as her, the World Cup’s top scorer said the winning U.S. team did not want to be ‘co-opted or corrupted’ by the Trump administration. 

‘There are so many other people that I would rather talk to and have meaningful conversations that can really affect change in Washington than going to the White House,’ she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper after returning home from France. 

But she said the team would be happy to talk to people who ‘believe in the same things we believe in’ such as AOC and the Democratic House Speaker.  

Repeating her refusal to go to the White House, she said: ‘I would not go, and every teammate that I’ve talked to explicitly about it would not go.’

Addressing the president, she blasted his Make America Great Again slogan and said: ‘Your message is excluding people. 

‘You’re excluding me, you’re excluding people that look like me, you’re excluding people of color, you’re excluding Americans that maybe support you.’

Asked who she would meet, Rapinoe said: ‘This is such a special moment for us, and to be able to sort of leverage this moment and talk about the things that we want to talk about and to celebrate like this with the leaders of our country is an incredible moment. 

‘So yes to AOC, yes to Pelosi, yes to a bipartsan Congress, yes to Chuck Schumer.

‘Yes to anyone else that wants to invite us and have a real substantive conversation and that believe in the same things we believe in.’  

Rapinoe has already used her growing platform to demand equal pay for female soccer players. 

Rapinoe said the team would be happy to talk to people who ‘believe in the same things we believe in’ such as Nancy Pelosi (left) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (right)

Flying the flag for gay soccer players, she tweeted on Sunday: ‘Science is science. Gays rule.’

Two of the World Cup-winning squad, Ashlyn Harris and Ali Krieger, are engaged to each other, and Rapinoe’s girlfriend Sue Bird was in the crowd for the final. 

Ocasio-Cortez made the offer of a visit before the tournament was even finished, saying she would welcome the U.S. team to the House of Representatives ‘anytime they’d like’. 

The team will also have a ticker-tape parade in New York City after they were invited by Democratic mayor Bill de Blasio.  

Rapinoe’s feud with Trump began during the tournament when she said she was ‘not going to the f****** White House’ if the team won the World Cup. 

That drew an angry response from the president, who said she should ‘never disrespect our country’ and demanded that ‘Megan should win first before she talks’. 

Rapinoe feuded with President Donald Trump (pictured at the White House yesterday) after refusing to visit his administration 

Rapinoe did win – scoring the opening goal in the final against the Netherlands and taking home the player of the tournament award and the prize for top goalscorer. 

She also caused a stir by declining to sing the national anthem as the teams lined up ahead of the final. 

Trump was more gracious after the final, congratulating the team for winning the World Cup and saying: ‘America is proud of you all’. 

His predecessor Barack Obama also praised the U.S. team’s efforts, calling them ‘an incredible team that’s always pushing themselves’.   

The American team never trailed at the tournament and set records with 26 goals and a 12-game World Cup winning streak dating to 2015.

Jill Ellis became the first coach to lead a team to two Women’s World Cup titles, and the U.S. also joined Germany in 2003 and 2007 as the only repeat champions. 

Sunday’s win in Lyon gave them their fourth World Cup triumph after 1991, 1999 and 2015.