One aspect of the upcoming presidential election that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention is whether we are comfortable with a President who uses sports as a spittoon for his racist expectorations.
For all their chest thumping about “cancel culture,” Trump and his family are unrestrained when it comes to badmouthing NFL teams saying players who protest racial injustice by taking a knee during the anthem will not be punished.
The games we play have always been important to Donald Trump. We know this not just because of his lies about being a baseball prodigy or his penchant for cheating at golf. It’s been almost forty years since he bought the New Jersey Generals in the upstart United States Football League before driving the entire league, with all of its talent and potential, into bankruptcy.
In 2014, Trump made an effort to buy into the NFL, placing a bid on the Buffalo Bills. Alas, NFL owners thought Trump was too tacky and his finances too scurrilous to be a part of their club, although they later would find him more than acceptable to be their President, as shown by the millions they gave to his inaugural committee.
If Trump had been able to buy the Buffalo Bills, he may never have sought the presidency on a publicity lark—proving once again that the Bills will always let us down.
Yet these efforts to find respectability and gratification for Trump’s bottomless ego in the world of sports pale in comparison to how he has sought to exploit sports for political gain.
It started in August 2016, when Trump was still a candidate. Colin Kaepernick took the knee heard round the world, protesting police violence during the national anthem. Trump derided Kaepernick for this bold—and, we now know, prophetic—act of dissent, saying “Maybe he should find a country that works better for him.”
Kaepernick has been a punching bag for Trump ever since, most infamously when he called him and other NFL players who were protesting police violence “sons of bitches” at a speech in Huntsville, Alabama. Trump in 2018 also went after the very citizenship of protesting Black NFL players, saying, “Maybe you shouldn’t be in the country.”
Trump’s wrath for Black athletes contrasts sharply from his view of outspoken white figures in the sports world. He never responded to the harsh criticism of his Muslim travel ban voiced by white NBA coaches Steve Kerr and Gregg Popovich. Even when soccer rebel Megan Rapinoe declared, “I’m not going to the fucking White House,” he still invited her and her team.
Trump never issued even congratulations, let alone invitations, to NBA and WNBA leagues dominated by Black players who have not been shy about criticizing his administration. (LeBron James’s calling Trump “U bum” on Twitter after the President blasted the Golden State Warrior guard Stephen Curry was the most retweeted athlete post of 2017 and is still a moment for the ages.)
Through this endless narrative of Trump using sports as a pulpit for his politics, he and his supporters have not afforded athletes that same privilege. When the aforementioned James critiqued the President on ESPN, Fox News lackey Laura Ingraham infamously told James to “shut up and dribble.”
For all their chest thumping about “cancel culture,” Trump and his family are unrestrained when it comes to badmouthing NFL teams saying players who protest racial injustice by taking a knee during the anthem will not be punished. Eric Trump, the dimmest of the Trump children, tweeted “Football is officially dead—so much for ‘America’s sport.’ Goodbye NFL... I’m gone.”
Yet beneath this bombast is a reason to be optimistic. The NFL is mostly run by a cabal of white billionaires who are roughly to the right of George Wallace. That these owners are more scared of their players being angry about racism in Trump’s America than they are of the Trump family’s ability to cancel their sport, speaks volumes.
Through it all, athletes have also been relentless about making sure that the sphere of sports is a place where they state unequivocally that Black lives matter. In four years, Trump hasn’t been able to break their political spine. If he’s re-elected, we can expect that project to be at the top of his list.