CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

King Trump: A Midas Whose Every Touch Turns Into a Shitshow

President Trump had a golden opportunity this month: using his power as leader, or more properly misleader, of the the world’s richest nation to convince the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), governing body of he world’s most widely followed sport, football, or what in the US is called soccer, to make the US as primary host of this year’s World Cup completion,(along with Canada and Mexico), a shining example of grace, efficiency and fairness.

Best of all, the US this year had a formidable men’s and women’s team, both of which had a real shot at winning the coveted World Cup.

All the president had to do was sit back and watch the games with the rest of the world, and make sure all 80 competing national teams from Brazil to Cape Verde, from Iran to Palestine, and their global fans are treated fairly.

Unfortunately, but sadly unexpectedly, that’s not what the president did.

First, he allowed his thuggish Homeland Security Department to impose severe restrictions on the Iranian mens’ team, who were required to find accommodations in Mexico and then fly to their various matches in the US, allegedly for “national security reasons,” Also ludicrously barred entry to the US (despite his already having an approved US visa in his passport) was Omar Artan, a prominent Somali referee. After spending a week in detention because of DHS “suspicions” of a terrorist connection,” he was deported back to his home country, where he received a heroes’ welcome.

Countless other foreign fans, mostly from Muslim countries, found themselves similarly denied entry to the US, causing them to lose the money they had paid for FIFA’s obscenely overpriced tickets.

Trump, as President, could obviously have put a stop to these outrages by his own out-of-control border control and immigration apparatus, but he did nothing.

Don’t imagine that Trump, not a man known for his work ethic, was simply too busy for such micromanagement. If that were the case, how to explain what he did next after the key scorer on the US men’s soccer team, Folarin Balogun, fouled a player in a knockout round against Bosnia-Herzegovina? That foul drew him a non-appealable Red Card that led automatically to his being banned from the US team’s next test, the game against highly ranked Belgium.

The sports analysts on TV and in print were all saying the loss of their key offensive player was a big blow to the USA team’s chances against the much better Belgian team. So Trump decided to shuffle in. He initially said nothing about his calling FIFA President Gianni Infantino. But when Infantino admitted to the Guardian that the US president had importuned him in three phone calls, all asking him to revoke the penalty so Balogun could play in his team’s next match, Trump admitted he had made a phone call to FIFA President Gianni Infantino, saying, “All I did was ask for a review, because I didn’t think it was a foul. I didn’t tell him what to do; I can’t tell him what to do.”

Realizing that nobody was believing his assertion that three calls from the president of the world’s most powerful nation w]should not be considered any kind of pressure by the recipient on the other end of the call, he switched to bragging about his unseemly and unsportsmanlike conduct, seeking instead to take credit for having succeeded in getting the Red Card ban lifted.

“I’m the one who got them to do it,” he boasted, telling reporters in the Oval Office, “I’ve never seen anything like it. That wasn’t a foul. That wasn’t even an infraction. That was two guys running full speed that happened to crash into each other.”

He went on to say that because of his efforts on behalf of Balogun and the US team, “We’re going to have a full team and Belgium is going to have a full team, and you know what, if they beat us, then they can be really proud. The other way, if they beat us, I say it was rigged, just like the [Biden] election was rigged in 2020.”

Meanwhile, the........

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