On June 13, 2024, a Facebook page called America – Love It Or Leave It published a post claiming former U.S. soccer player Megan Rapinoe was disqualified from the “Pro Soccer Hall of Fame.”
The post quoted an unnamed source as saying: “Inducteed [sic] should be positive role models. Ms. Rapinoe has a long way to go.” It added that Rapinoe had knelt for the national anthem and pledged to leave the country if she did not “get her way.”
A similar claim appeared on X and elsewhere on Facebook in March 2024, and the same page produced similar posts in December 2023 and April 2024.
Facebook users replying to the June 2024 post appeared to believe the claim was true, with one writing: “She will not be missed when she leaves.”
Another commented: “Good bye! America is a great country! Just some people need to leave…find a country you love better! Bye bye.”
However, this item was not a factual recounting of real-life events. It was posted by a Facebook account that described its output as being satirical in nature, as follows:
America’s Last Line of Defense, which was mentioned by the account, likewise described its content as satirical.
ALIOLI even commented on the Rapinoe post, saying the former soccer player “couldn’t care less about being inducted into the fictitious ALLOD Multiverse version of the Pro Soccer Hall of Fame… since she’ll be in the real one.”
Snopes found no evidence Rapinoe had been disqualified from any hall of fame, and likewise no news outlets reported such news. Additionally, the major soccer hall of fame in the U.S. is named the National Soccer Hall of Fame, not the Pro Soccer Hall of Fame.
We addressed another satirical post by the same Facebook page on June 13, 2024, when the page claimed TV chef Gordon Ramsay resigned as a spokesman for Tyson Foods because he did not want to endorse the company using bugs in their foods.
For background, here is why we sometimes write about satire/humor.
