On Aug. 1, HBO Sports will air “Seeing America with Megan Rapinoe,” a conversation featuring Rapinoe, the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team captain, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), 1619 Project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones, and comedian Hasan Minhaj.
Rapinoe, who first knelt during the national anthem in September 2016 as a “nod to [Colin] Kaepernick,” told Yahoo Sports in May 2019, “I’ll probably never put my hand over my heart. I’ll probably never sing the national anthem again.” Describing herself as “a walking protest when it comes to the Trump administration,” because of “everything I stand for,” she told Yahoo, “So it’s kind of a good ‘F you’ to any sort of inequality or bad sentiments that the [Trump] administration might have towards people who don’t look exactly like him. Which, God help us if we all looked like him. Scary. Really scary. Ahh, disturbing.”
Shortly after preemptively rejecting an invitation to the White House should the women’s team win the World Cup, Rapinoe accepted an invitation from democratic socialist Ocasio-Cortez. “It may not be the White House, but we’d be happy to welcome [Megan Rapinoe] & the entire [U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team] for a tour of the House of Representatives anytime they’d like,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.
Rapinoe responded, “Consider it done.”
Hannah-Jones’ 1619 Project, created with The New York Times, attempts to “reframe the country’s history” by insisting that the United States’ true founding year is 1619, when the first slaves came to America, not 1776, when the Declaration first declared the nation’s independence and established the founding principles that “all men are created equal” and have the God-given right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Hannah-Jones claimed in her lead-in essay for the project, “Conveniently left out of our founding mythology is the fact that one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.” The foundational claim was debunked by multiple prominent historians.
The New York Post wrote in an op-ed from their editorial board last March, “That’s a lie, pure and simple, and the paper still hasn’t corrected it. It ‘made an important clarification,’ in Hannah-Jones’ words. A new ‘editors note’ explains, ‘A passage has been adjusted.’ Namely, it added two words: The essay now says protecting slavery was the main reason ‘some of’ the colonists fought to rebel from England.”
“We are grateful Megan Rapinoe would choose HBO as home for this conversation and look forward to more opportunities with her to continue this dialogue,” Peter Nelson, Executive Vice President, HBO Sports, stated in a press release. “Megan is fearless in speaking out on issues. Joined by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Nikole Hannah-Jones and Hasan Minhaj, this conversation embraces the challenges we collectively face.”
Rapinoe said in response to the show’s announcement, “It is an honor to host a show with a critical conversation between some of America’s most innovative thought leaders. I am so thankful to HBO for providing such a powerful platform for this important dialogue.”