Meddle in the sports world

Trump looks to meddle in the sports world like no president before

He sees power in dominating sports arenas as much as policy arenas.

By Megan Messerly and Jake Traylor

When President Donald Trump and Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred met at the White House last month, they discussed one of the president’s passion projects — reinstating baseball star Pete Rose to make him eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

This week, that’s exactly what Manfred did.

It’s the latest example of how Trump has long tried to harness sports to flex his power and score political points, one of the most significant tools he has used to capture pop culture in ways that few politicians can rival. But his second term embrace has been different from the rocky relationship of his first, when he used clashes with the NFL and other leagues over racial protests to rile his base. Now, he is enjoying his dominance over those same leagues and using the imagery of his constant association with sports to enter American arenas and living rooms like no other president before.

The longtime sports fan, who broadened his appeal on the UFC circuit and at one point owned a professional football team, has made sports a defining feature of his second term. Most of his domestic trips — other than to West Palm Beach and New Jersey to golf — have been to attend a sporting event. He has already welcomed a handful of championship teams to the White House since taking office and he even recently inserted himself into the NFL draft by advocating for top prospect Shedeur Sanders after he was passed over.

Alone, any one of these moves could be brushed off as mere pageantry, attributed to the eagerness of a president who not only loves sports but sees himself as a sportsworld figure who can use football, baseball and ultimate fighting to boost his popularity. In sum, they underscore a more serious point — that it’s not just government, but culture, that Trump is seeking to command.

It’s an evolution from Trump’s relationship to sports in his first term. For decades, presidents have welcomed teams to the White House and attended games. But the sports world repeatedly denied Trump the traditional title of sports-fan-in-chief during his first term, with players and teams spurning White House championship visits amid high-profile clashes with the president over race and patriotism. Trump played his part, railing against Colin Kaepernick-inspired racial justice protests on the NFL sidelines, denouncing the league as “soft,” and sparring with NBA stars Stephen Curry and LeBron James.

Now, in a much changed cultural milieu, not only are teams embracing Trump — but the president is using his newfound power to position himself as a lodestone in the sports world, using the White House for flashy announcements.

“It’s a massive shift from Trump 1.0. I mean, heck, think about Roger Goodell and the owner of the Washington franchise being in the Oval Office to announce the NFL draft is going to take place in D.C. in ‘27,” said Clay Travis, founder of the conservative sports and politics site OutKick and a Trump supporter, referring to Trump’s May 5 announcement with the NFL commissioner.

The prominent role Trump is taking in the world of sports reflects how much American culture has shifted since the president took office eight years ago. As the so-called “resistance” worked to foil Trump, even the more conservative sports world repeatedly found itself butting heads with the president, including a notable dust-up between Trump and Goodell over players’ decisions to kneel during the national anthem — a protest led by Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback — which the president derided as a “total disrespect of our heritage” and Goodell calling the Trump’s remarks “divisive.”

But 2025 is not 2017. Gen Z men, who make up a large chunk of not only sports fans but are now professional athletes themselves, voted decisively for Trump in the 2024 election, and are aligning more Republican than they are Democrat amid a widening gender gap, according to a recent NBC poll. The poll found 45 percent of Gen Z men approve of Trump’s performance, compared to 24 percent of young women.

The sports realm’s 180 on Trump has also been bolstered by athlete-adjacent conservative media stars who match the president’s politics and personality. In the lead-up to the 2024 election, Trump joined Joe Rogan and Logan Paul’s popular podcasts — where sports and “bro talk” abound. American soccer player Christian Pulisic and UFC champion Jon Jones are among the athletes who celebrated victories by doing the “Trump dance,” the viral shimmy the president performs at his rallies set to the “YMCA.”

This year’s White House event with the Philadelphia Eagles illustrated the broader shift. After the team’s 2018 Super Bowl win, many of the players planned to skip the White House celebration — and then Trump canceled the visit altogether citing frustrations over the national anthem protests, holding a “Celebration of America” event instead. Seven years later, on the heels of this year’s Super Bowl win, not only did the Eagles show up for the celebration en masse, but running back Saquon Barkley accompanied Trump on Air Force One from New Jersey.

At the event, Trump smiled, cracked jokes and weighed in on intricacies of the NFL rules, relishing the chance to talk about the “tush push” touchdown.

“You know, they’re talking about getting rid of that play, I understand. They should keep it. What do you think, Saquon? Having guys like this pushing you around? I like it. It’s sort of exciting and different…,” Trump said. “I would like to go back to the regular kickoff, however. We don’t like that kickoff where nobody’s moving.”

Presidents of all stripes have basked in the attention of sports figures, but rarely to the extent that Trump has during his second term. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama hosted teams and attended games. Obama even used his leverage as president to get the city of Boston to erect a statue of Celtics legend Bill Russell at city hall.

Trump has long had ties to the UFC, and is friends with its CEO Dana White. The president tapped former World Wrestling Entertainment executive Linda McMahon to posts in both his administrations. He inserted himself into the world of football when he in the mid-1980s purchased the New Jersey Generals, a football team in the United State Football League, which at one time attempted to rival the NFL and that Trump is often credited with killing. He also attempted to purchase the Buffalo Bills in 2014.

So far this year, Trump has attended the Super Bowl, the Daytona 500, the NCAA men’s wrestling championships and a UFC fight in Miami. Three White House officials, who were granted anonymity to share details of the president’s thinking, said Trump recognizes that many sports fans see politics in terms of persona, more than as a set of policy prescriptions or position papers.

“It’s not necessarily that they love or know every policy,” said one White House official, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “It’s just that they love everything else around him.”

Trump needs his core supporters more than ever — and a chance to change the subject — as his approval ratings sag with the general public over his tariff policy that has upended the economy.

“He understands there are a lot of eyeballs at those and a lot of those are his supporters’,” said Douglas Heye, a veteran GOP strategist who worked in the George W. Bush administration. “You haven’t seen him at the Metropolitan Opera.”

Democrats, who argue that Trump is phony on just about everything, don’t quibble with his passion for sports.

“I can criticize him about 99 things and the one I would defend him on would be his affection for sports,” said James Carville, the veteran Democratic strategist. “I’d rather see him distracted by sports than actually doing something.”

It’s not entirely clear to what extent Trump’s involvement contributed to Rose, who was banned from the MLB over sports betting allegations, being made eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame, or Sanders being drafted by the Cleveland Browns.

“Is it possible that Jimmy Haslam, who owns the Cleveland Browns, in the back of his mind when he’s deciding to draft two quarterbacks might be thinking, hey, this is not going to hurt me with Trump? Sure. Do I think he’s going to make a choice for his team entirely based on what Trump thinks, no, of course not,” said Travis, the OutKick founder.

Yet there remain sharp strong pockets of resistance to Trump, especially in the NBA where coaches like the Golden State Warriors’ Steve Kerr and recently retired San Antonio Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich have used their platforms to speak out against the president. During a post-game press conference last month, Kerr donned a Harvard t-shirt to protest the federal government’s decision to freeze billions of dollars in grants and contracts to the university after it said it would not comply with administration demands.

“I believe in academic freedom. I believe it’s crucial for all of our institutions to be able to handle their own business the way they want to, and they should not be shaken down and told what to teach, what to say, by our government,” Kerr said. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, but it’s kind of par for the course right now.”

And on the horizon during Trump’s second administration are two of sports most anticipated and watched spectacles: the 2028 Summer Olympic Games and the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which will both take place on American soil. This week, Qatar officially passed the World Cup hosting duties to the U.S. during a ceremony in Doha. Qatar Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani signed the ball from the 2022 cup, followed by Trump, and then FIFA President Gianni Infantino.

The World Cup tournament, which will be played in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, will be both momentous and fraught. A tournament bid that initially focused on the unity of the North American continent — a deal Trump in his first administration had a hand in — has now been marred by divisive tariffs the president has slapped on its neighbors, along with a demand that Canada become “the 51st state.”

Although the 2026 tournament and 2028 Summer Games are far off, one of the White House officials said Trump is sure to attend.