“I’ll only talk to people who agree with me” is pretty much American politics in 2019 in a nutshell.

By “believes in the same things we believe,” does she mean broad big-picture stuff like “America is great”? (Does Rapinoe believe that, actually?) Or does she mean “women’s soccer stars deserve the same pay as men even though their sport brings in a fraction as much revenue and they get a larger share of that revenue than male players do”?

No room for disagreement on that second point in the name of conversation, I assume.

Rapinoe, after saying she’ll never visit Trump, gives a “shoutout” to @AOC and says she’ll go to D.C. to have a “substantive conversation” with “anyone” … who “believes the same things we believe in.” pic.twitter.com/vfhvlybEGT

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 10, 2019

They’re still a soccer team, right? They haven’t morphed into a political party?

As far as I know, they’re not yet planning to meet with any Republicans during their sojourn to D.C. to mug for the camera with the likes of AOC and Chuck Schumer. One very famous Republican did of course invite them to meet and was turned down, at least by Rapinoe. She says in the clip that she’s willing to meet with the “bipartisan Congress,” so we’ll see. Hopefully there are no more rejections of GOPers or else that “one nation, one team” shtick is going to ring a leeeetle hollow.

You know, I feel like I did my patriotic (or at least nationalist) duty with Rapinoe and the soccer team. I watched the tournament. I cheered for them. I shrugged off their bickering with Trump because, after all, if it’s a day that ends with “Y,” Trump is bickering with someone. I gritted my teeth and laughed through their obnoxious post-goal celebrations because succeeding wildly and being a showboating dick about it is pretty much the American dream. I don’t even object to Rapinoe’s partisanship, really: She’s a leftist but we write about leftists every day, so whatever. What got me about this CNN interview was the sheer exhaustion of getting another snoutful of embittered politics in one of the few realms left in which politics tends not to intrude, sports. A big snoutful too. I feel like I know more about Rapinoe’s worldview now, after five weeks of exposure to her, than I know about LeBron James’s after 15 years.

Are we almost done with this, then? She and the team were great, they deserve their parade today in NYC, she deserved every award she won at the World Cup, and I hope attendance for pro women’s soccer games quadruples because of it. Now can we get back to the daily Bob Mueller coverage in CNN primetime?

In lieu of an exit question, here’s Rapinoe shoving a little more politics into that snout of yours.

Megan Rapinoe on kneeling during the national anthem: “I had this immense sense of pride” pic.twitter.com/WbEFCt3ENM

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 10, 2019