What a Donald Trump presidency means for sport
What a Donald Trump presidency means for sport
An unwelcome throwback to my political reporter days
As convicted felon Donald Trump did his victory dance on Election Night, he called to a familiar face in the crowd: two-time US Open champion golfer Bryson DeChambeau.
Sporting a MAGA cap, DeChambeau lumbered onto the stage eventually, joining the dozens of Trump’s family, friends and high-profile supporters celebrating his landmark victory over Kamala Harris. And so began the second season of President Trump, and he wasted no time in getting his tentacles immersed into sport.
I am well aware that sport is not the most important part of this story. A second term for Trump will bring many wide-ranging, global issues to the forefront that go far beyond sport’s reach. The overturning of Roe vs Wade and the subsequent scaling back of abortion rights, which he laid the groundwork for during his first term in office, is the most striking example of that. His approach to wars in the Middle East and Ukraine could have terrifying impending consequences too. But this is a sport Substack, and I wanted to offer a couple of (rambling) thoughts on where we’ve felt his impact in this space.
I was reporting in Washington DC the last time Trump became president. It was late summer in 2016, I was just out of university and doing a five-month internship with a small media platform, reporting on the political viewpoints of millennial Americans ahead of the Clinton-Trump election. I did a lot of vox pops at rallies, protests and university campuses and interviewed political analysts and pollsters. It felt like a pivotal moment in history and I absolutely loved reporting on it.
One of the stories I remember most from that time was NFL player Colin Kaepernick making headlines when he took a knee during the national anthem for the first time. It was the first story I remember covering and discussing with my new colleagues. Kaepernick decided to kneel in protest of the oppression of Black people and people of colour in the United States, but the reaction to his protest was visceral, it took over the news cycle and he became a sporting pariah in many (particularly right-wing) corners. Then-presidential candidate Trump used the story as a political football, telling Kaepernick he “should find a country that works better for him”.
It was the ultimate example of how an individual’s sporting activism could be mobilised by the culture war brigade, and Trump does that better than most. It sparked huge debates about patriotism and divisiveness, and turned out to be a fitting introduction to American politics for me. It was eye-opening, equal parts fascinating and grim viewing (as were the next few months of covering the election, might I add).
So I saw first-hand the impact of Trump weighing in on a sporting issue before he even entered office. He has made a habit of continuing to wade in ever since and I don’t expect he will stop now.
Sports and politics are interlinked, always. Though people like Trump love to tell athletes to stick to the sport, he can’t help but try and be relevant in those spaces too.
Trump is not the only one to use sport to spout whatever message suits him best. Sport represents soft power and influence, and politicians across the spectrum love to position themselves within that setting, to varying success. The most serious examples are sporting moments being used as political propaganda, in the way of Russia’s Vladimir Putin for instance. On the other, more ridiculous side of the spectrum, you have French President Emmanuel Macron, who was derided for seeking a moment in the limelight by consoling the French men’s national football team after their World Cup final loss in 2022. Add to that former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who was mocked this past summer for appearing unaware that Wales had not qualified for the Euros and, more recently, Prime Minister Keir Starmer took some heat for accepting corporate hospitality invitations from his lifelong club, Arsenal.
Apart from being a known cheat on the golf course, you can bet that Trump will be front and centre across sport in the years ahead. He will be a presence at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. He’ll also probably be at the 2026 men’s World Cup, which is being part-hosted in the US (Fifa president Gianni Infantino was one of the first to offer Trump congratulations in a cringe-worthy Instagram post). Even Rory McIlroy, when asked this week, suggested that Trump and Elon Musk might team up to solve golf’s civil war between the PGA Tour and LIV. Trump’s strong links with Saudi Arabia may well have reverberations beyond golf too.
As a known misogynist, Trump has not famously been supportive of women’s sport. However, you can bet that his transphobic rhetoric will only further embolden those who, in recent years, have suddenly sprouted a new interest in women’s sport for the sole purpose of pushing exclusionary policies.
Beyond that incendiary issue, I can’t imagine we’ll see him offering many congratulatory Tweets or otherwise to the increasingly popular women’s sports leagues and teams across the US, as has become customary for sitting president Joe Biden.
Who can forget that, the last time Trump was president, he got into a public spat with footballer and women’s sport icon Megan Rapinoe during the 2019 Women’s World Cup, when she said she would “not be going to the fucking White House” if invited by Trump. It created a media storm. She was branded as “unpatriotic” and had the world’s eyes on her, but Rapinoe and her teammates shrugged off the pressure and still won the World Cup, their fourth title. Rapinoe took home the Golden Boot and Golden Ball awards too. (She did not go to Trump’s White House.) Four years later, Trump was petty enough to publicly celebrate and taunt Rapinoe and her teammates when they exited the Tokyo Olympics and 2023 World Cup. “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,” he said. Real mature.
Expect similar boycotts of the White House to come. This election cycle has been dominated by celebrities, including sports stars, endorsing Harris, the likes of NBA stars Steph Curry and LeBron James included. On Instagram, Simone Biles reacted to the election results by re-sharing the quote: “Supporting a convicted felon over a woman is fucking insane.”
All that is to say, sport may not be top of the political agenda, but it will undoubtedly be part of Trump’s presidency. Weaponising a space he is unwelcome in is just his way.
I’ll end with a more uplifting message from the great Billie Jean King:
A couple more things
If you’re interested in sport’s influence on politics, the Guardian published a great guide on which US major league team owners made huge political donations during this cycle. Somewhat unsurprisingly, 95 per cent of total contributions went to Republicans.
If you want to watch a documentary about another (alleged) sexual predator and the strength of a team that rallied against him, Se Acabo: The Kiss That Changed Spanish Football debuted on Netflix recently, and charts the fallout from Luis Rubiales’ unwanted kiss on Spanish national team player Jenni Hermoso.
If you want to switch off from it all, the WTA Finals reach a climax this weekend. You can watch on Sky Sports, and I’d suggest reading this BBC report on how hosting the tournament in Saudi Arabia is going, by Laura Scott and Sarah Dawkins.
That’s all for this week, thanks for reading!
Molly x
(PS I tried to send this out yesterday and had some technical issues, so apologies if you’ve received this post twice!)
