Tuesday
Everything Trump touches turns to crap, and that goes for sports as well as for monuments, institutional norms, the rule of law, and Constitutional rights. His congratulations to the Olympic gold medal-winning men’s hockey team included denigration of the Olympic gold medal-winning women’s hockey team. He insisted on attending the New York Knicks game during their championship run, seeking to leech off the city’s joy and in the process ruining the traditional watch parties held outside the stadium. Then he went on to taint one of the feel good stories of the World Cup, the exciting U.S. men’s team (USMT).
Fans from other nations who had been rooting for the U.S. turned against them after Trump instructed persuaded the equally corrupt FIFA leadership to overturn a red card, something they never do.
The ancient Greeks could have predicted what happened next. Even with the now unsuspended Folarin Balugon playing, the team lost in humiliating 4-1 fashion to Belgium. The goddess Nemesis, who punishes humans for their hubris, struck again.
For those fans who cared only to get Balugon back on the field and were fine with Trump’s intervention, I remind them of the fate of the crew in Rime of the Ancient Mariner. They are fine with the mariner killing the albatross when doing so appears to have cleared away the fog and mist but then outraged when all the breezes cease to blow and the ship is becalmed. At that point they hang the dead bird around the mariner’s neck, preferring to blame someone else rather than acknowledge that they have become complicit in the crime.
I don’t know whether the stain of Trump’s intervention hung around the necks of the USMT, but they didn’t appear to play with the same elan as in previous games. Of course, they were facing a Belgium team that was outraged at how the rules had been broken, which provided extra motivation. Whatever the cause of the U.S.’s lackluster performance, it felt like some kind of karmic justice had been served, even though the team and Balogun were themselves innocent.
And what about Trump? As usual, he pulled off his usual Tom and Daisy retreat:
They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.
What next after messing with the World Cup and ruining the nation’s 250th anniversary? The 2028 Olympics will be held in Los Angeles during the final year of Trump’s presidency.
