Trump at the Super Bowl: how the NFL's culture war ended in surrender
As a 2016 presidential candidate and White House occupant, Donald Trump lambasted NFL players for kneeling during the national anthem in protest at civil rights abuses. Now, set to become the first incumbent president to attend a Super Bowl, it appears that the US's most popular sport is genuflecting before him.
Trump will reportedly attend the clash between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday in New Orleans as a guest of Gayle Benson, the owner of the New Orleans Saints. A pre-recorded interview conducted by a Fox News anchor will also air during the pre-game show of an event that last year was viewed by more than 123m Americans. And while he watches the action, Trump will not have to stare at a message inspired by the kind of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) strategies that he is intent on bulldozing.
The real-estate tycoon is back in the White House for the first time in four years and for the first time in a Super Bowl since 2021 the message 'End Racism' will not be stencilled on to the field in one of the end zones. End Racism is a slogan the NFL began to promote after George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis in 2020. The phrase formed part of Inspire Change, a community social justice initiative the league launched in the wake of the former quarterback Colin Kaepernick's activism against racism and police brutality.
Trump, however, sought to use the protests to rile up his base during his first term, urging team owners to fire players who kneel during the anthem and encouraging fans to walk out. That drew a riposte from the NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, who said that 'divisive comments like these demonstrate an unfortunate lack of respect for the NFL'.
Goodell told reporters on Monday that the league will continue its 'diversity efforts' and an NFL spokesman told The Athletic that 'Choose Love' and 'It Takes All Of Us' will be written in the end zones as an appropriate response to the recent terrorist attack in New Orleans' French Quarter, the Washington air collision and the Los Angeles wildfires.
Still, the slogan change and the president's planned presence in the Caesars Superdome are conspicuous at a time when American sports appear to be following the corporate sector in adopting policies of appeasement or silence towards Trump, who has signed executive orders aimed at eliminating DEI initiatives in the federal government and pressurising private entities into stifling their programs. To his supporters this is a salvo in the 'war on woke'. To his critics the tactic is a hallmark of a racist agenda.
'President Trump loves a victory lap and this is certainly a victory lap over the NFL,' says Brandon Rottinghaus, a politics professor at the University of Houston and co-director of the Presidential Greatness Project survey.
The 'Trump dance' became a viral celebration in the NFL after last November's election, while on Wednesday the Chiefs' biggest stars, quarterback Patrick Mahomes and tight end Travis Kelce, both said it will be 'cool' to play in front of Trump. Kelce added that it will be 'awesome' and 'a great honor … no matter who the president is, I know I'm excited'. His enthusiasm raised eyebrows since he is in a relationship with Taylor Swift. The pop star endorsed Kamala Harris in the election and Trump responded by declaring 'I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT' on social media.
The basketball star LeBron James, who called Trump a 'bum' in 2017 and supported Harris last year, is among the previously outspoken high-profile athletes who have kept quiet so far in Trump's second term. Of course, the administration is less than a month old. But Trump has been busy, issuing a flurry of directives on culture wars issues and inviting Elon Musk to eradicate large portions of the federal government. And Trump is explicitly using sports as a political tool, perhaps even more flagrantly than in his first term.
At half time of the College Football Playoff National Championship on 20 January – Trump's inauguration day – ESPN, the leading American sports network, aired a video message from Trump that amounted to a political broadcast in which he said Americans had 'suffered greatly' under the Biden administration. ESPN said the game averaged 22m viewers, making it the most-watched non-NFL sporting event of the past year.
After campaigning on a pledge to 'keep men out of women's sports', on Wednesday, surrounded by young female athletes, Trump signed an executive order banning transgender athletes from taking part in women's sports, the latest in a series of gender-related directives. The NCAA, US college sports' governing body, fell in line the next day with what its president, Charlie Baker, described as Trump's 'clear, national standard'.
Though a sitting president's Super Bowl attendance will be a novelty, American commanders-in-chief have a long tradition of attending baseball games: William Taft threw the ceremonial first pitch on opening day in Washington in 1910. George W Bush, a former part-owner of the Texas Rangers, famously took to the mound before a 2001 World Series game at Yankee Stadium in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Trump, though, is probably more interested in other sports, and not merely because he was booed and subjected to a chant of 'lock him up' in 2019 while attending a Washington Nationals World Series game only three miles away from the White House.
The US will host the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Olympic Games and Trump, who has a chummy relationship with Fifa president Gianni Infantino, has a replica of the soccer trophy on prominent display in the Oval Office. 'I anticipate seeing the president very involved in the pop culture and sports worlds, it's an easy way for him to connect to people,' Rottinghaus says.
Barack Obama attended games and filled out an annual college basketball prediction bracket, but his relationship with sports seemed driven by passionate fandom more than political calculation. Trump sees sports as a vehicle with a value that goes far beyond photo opportunities with celebrities.
'The infusion of sports culture and politics is a way that Donald Trump can demonstrate wins,' Rottinghaus adds. 'It's one thing to eliminate DEI at agencies in government that most people have never heard of, it's another to get the NFL and individual teams to change the way that they message their product. That's a different kind of win that's really the kind of thing that his supporters want.'
Trump's fractious relationship with the NFL predates the anthem controversy. Long a frustrated wannabe team owner, he made a failed attempt to buy the Buffalo Bills in 2014 in what turned into a fierce rivalry with a bid spearheaded by Jon Bon Jovi. And as the owner of the New Jersey Generals, a team in the defunct United States Football League, he led an ill-fated anti-trust lawsuit against the NFL in 1986 with the aim of forcing a merger. But he was feted by fans on a visit to a Pittsburgh Steelers game last October, while in his previous term as president he named the co-owner of the New York Jets, Woody Johnson, as ambassador to the UK.
The Republican wrote on Friday that it 'WILL BE A GREAT GAME!!!' However, the state of relative calm between Trump and the NFL might be contingent on the musical entertainment and whether the Chiefs win their third successive title. The half-time show is not usually overtly political but this year it is headlined by the rapper Kendrick Lamar, whose 2015 track Alright was adopted by Black Lives Matter demonstrators. In 2017 he rapped: 'Donald Trump is a chump'.
Trump, meanwhile, hailed the Chiefs on social media after their AFC Championship Game victory over the Bills a fortnight ago: 'Congratulations to the Kansas City Chiefs. What a GREAT Team, Coach, Quarterback, and virtually everything else, including those fantastic FANS, that voted for me (MAGA!) in record numbers.'
He also praised the Bills. But there was no mention of the Eagles thrashing the Washington Commanders earlier in the day. Philadelphia won the Super Bowl in 2018. That year Trump scrapped their invitation to the White House - an honor habitually afforded to the victorious team - after it became clear that almost none of the players or staff were willing to attend as a result of his divisive conduct. Last year Trump depicted the heavily-Democratic city as a crime-ravaged dystopia. Another Philadelphia victory might re-ignite hostilities and explode what appears to be an uneasy truce – or else offer more evidence that the sporting climate has shifted from resistance to acceptance.
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