Given the NFL’s enormous cultural footprint and its loyal following in the United States, common sense might suggest that political leaders would want to align themselves with the league, if for no other reason than to side with the American mainstream.
Donald Trump, however, can’t seem to help himself.
Five years ago, Politico highlighted the president’s “decadeslong grudge against the NFL” and the eagerness with which he has incorporated the league into his broader “culture war strategy.”
Five years later, he’s still at it. NBC News reported:
If the NFL wants to improve its relationship with the current administration, there’s a new way to do it.
Change the name of the sport.
President Trump, who got the royal treatment and them some from FIFA at Friday’s World Cup draw, suggested that the world isn’t big enough for two sports with the same name.
Shortly after FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, rewarded Trump with a hastily arranged and entirely unwarranted new “peace” prize, the American president took a moment to comment on the names commonly associated with the sport.
“But when you look at what has happened to football in the United States, it’s again ‘soccer’ in the United States,” the Republican said. “We seem to never call it that because we have a little bit of a conflict with another thing that’s called football. But when you think about it, shouldn’t it really be called — I mean, this is football, there’s no question about it. We have to come up with another name for the NFL stuff. It really doesn’t make sense when you think about it.”
For now, let’s put aside what the political world’s reaction might be if a Democratic president announced that he or she wanted to rename American football. Let’s also not dwell on the fact that Trump almost certainly wasn’t making a serious proposition about a name change.
Instead, it’s worth pausing to appreciate the familiarity of the circumstances.
It was just two months ago when Trump said he was unfamiliar with Bad Bunny, but he nevertheless considered the entertainer’s role as the Super Bowl halftime performer to be “absolutely ridiculous.” The president quickly added that he dislikes the NFL’s kickoff rule, saying it looks “ridiculous” and “terrible.” (The rule was instituted last year, but Trump continues to complain about it with unnerving frequency.) What’s more, earlier this summer, Trump used his social media platform to argue that the Washington Commanders should return to their previous, offensive name, adding, “I may put a restriction on them that if they don’t change the name back. … I won’t make a deal for them to build a Stadium in Washington.” (This is a stadium that the Republican wants to see named after himself.) For her part, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also recently said, in reference to league officials, “They suck and we’ll win and God will bless us.” To the extent that the NFL has become a political football, it’s apparently in Democrats’ hands. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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