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Trump’s Reverse Midas Touch Even Got the World Cup

Of course fans roundly booed the president at the World Cup final: Damaging the integrity of anything he touches is true to the Trump brand.

Team Spain celebrates winning the 2026 FIFA World Cup on July 19, 2026, in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

At the 2026 World Cup final, the glass encasing the press box was so thick, reported CBS sports journalist Pardeep Cattry, that FIFA’s booming pregame concert was inaudible. Yet, when the match ended, with Spain emerging victorious over Argentina to win it all 1–0 in extra time, you could hear the boos right through the glass: As Donald Trump took to the field to hand out the FIFA World Cup trophy, the decibel level literally rose from 78 to 84. The stadium crowd saw Trump and were audibly repulsed.

This response was a fitting coda to the 2026 World Cup: a tournament engulfed by the stench of Trump’s racism, xenophobia, corruption, and lies. Although Trump himself only attended the World Cup final, the president and his administration stained the tournament in numerous ways, each time so egregiously that it would be unfathomable for another host to do even one of them.

The Trump regime weaponized the World Cup to advance cruelty and brutality from beginning to end—the cruelty, as we’ve long learned, being the point. Ahead of the tournament, the Trump administration barred award-winning Somali referee Omar Abdulkadir Artan from entering the United States, following an 11-hour interrogation in Miami. This was a direct message to right-wing voters who rallied behind his previous racist comments about Somali people being “garbage.”

Then came the Trump administration’s treatment of Iran’s World Cup team. Team Melli, forbidden from staying overnight in the US following their games, was forced to commute from its relocated base in Tijuana to its matches in Los Angeles and Seattle. Of course, Iran’s fans were banned from traveling to the US to attend matches, alongside people from Haiti, Senegal, and Ivory Coast who were blanket denied visas. When Iran was eliminated from the tournament, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin gloated, “I........

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