Donald Trump wanted a fight with the athletes. They may well have condemned him | Sport

SPorts and politics have always existed at a very public intersection in American life, but the illusory firewall that separates them has never been more exposed than in the past four years. Donald Trump’s political alchemy has always been based on his uncanny ability to exploit the flaws that divide us. It has proven to be an essential tactic for someone who managed to capture the Republican presidential nomination despite failing to win a majority in the first 40 primaries and caucuses, who won the White House despite losing the popular vote by nearly three million ballots and whose Overall approval ratings have increased. he never reached a majority during his tenure.

Since the early days of his administration, Trump has found fertile ground to bring this fight into America’s ultimate unifying arena: co-opting American sports not just as a proxy battle in culture wars that reflect a country’s deep divisions. but as the main stage. He has always recognized sports as an inextricable slice of the American experience – from owning a team in the upstart United States Football League in the early 1980s to hosting a series of major prize fights at his Atlantic City casino. before it went bankrupt, especially in 1988. blockbuster between Mike Tyson and Michael Spinks, for which he paid a record fee of $ 11 million. It is these roots in promoting boxing, where misdirection and the multiple arts of emotional manipulation are the actions, that served him particularly well during his astonishing rise to the White House. But it wasn’t until a rally in Alabama, nine months into his presidency, that he first seized on what became his favorite source of easy political points.

His sensational barrage on Colin Kaepernick was just the beginning. Before long, Trump was in a joust with NBA stars Stephen Curry and LeBron James over his decision to rescind the unaccepted invitation from the Golden State Warriors to visit the White House that traditionally extended to championship-winning teams. (causing the burning of all time from LeBron from “U boom”). He fell out with Megan Rapinoe, a proudly gay athlete with a flair for battle whose outspoken political views have made her a lightning rod for conservatives. He launched a baseless attack on Bubba Wallace over an incident this summer in which a rope was found in the garage of Nascar’s only black driver’s team. When then-ESPN correspondent Jemele Hill tweeted that Trump was “a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself with other white supremacists,” Trump responded first through the White House press secretary, who stated the comments ” a triggered offense, “and then doubled. below with a name verification on Twitter linked to Hill’s two-week suspension from the network.

During the first years it was a free company. The selective demonization of these so-called elites, almost exclusively of minority or marginalized communities, was red meat for their base: a white male who speaks harshly in a country where white males speak harshly to many is still seen as something to impress. . He played on our worst instincts and our lowest common denominator. Unfortunately, it was good policy.

But a funny thing happened on the way to re-election that for years felt like a fait accompli given the historic power of the incumbent. With the sports world paralyzed due to the coronavirus pandemic and amid unrest across the country over the police killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, the calculation changed. A strategy that depended on the highly instinctive dominance of thin margins began to lean against its driver. The buildup of the president’s incessant backlash led to an organization among professional athletes that not only drew attention to social and racial injustice, remember: Kaepernick just wanted to start a conversation, but sparked a fever pitch in athlete activism not seen since. the 1960s, when champions like Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar risked their livelihoods to be on the front lines of the civil rights movement.

In June, Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner who three years ago gave Trump a decisive optical victory when he unveiled a policy that required every player, coach, coach, ball boy, umpire, and executive to perform the national anthem or face off. the punishment, admitted the decision. He got it wrong in a surprising change in attitude that was seen as a slight from the president of the United States. Goodell’s mea culpa directly followed a video I challenge the league from some of the NFL’s biggest stars, including Patrick Mahomes, Deshaun Watson, and Odell Beckham, who spoke powerfully about the pervasiveness of systemic racism against black Americans.

A week later, LeBron joined a group of prominent athletes and artists to form More Than a Vote, an organization aimed at attracting black voters. Not long after, Curry, a two-time NBA MVP and one of basketball’s most popular stars, appeared with his wife, Ayesha, and their two daughters in a video endorsing Biden during the Democratic National Convention. Even Michael Jordan, whose infamous claim that “Republicans buy sneakers too” led a generation of athletes to keep their heads down when it came to thorny issues so as not to alienate the consumer, wrote checks worth $ 2.5 million. to fight the suppression of black voters as part of a 10-year, $ 100 million pledge to combat institutional racism. “We understand that one of the main ways we can change systemic racism is at the ballot box,” he said. “We know it will take time to create the change we want to see, but we are working quickly to take steps to make the voice of the Black Community heard.”

When Joe Biden delivered a speech in Gettysburg last month, widely recognized as the rhetorical highlight of his campaign, he quoted the comments of then-Clippers head coach Doc Rivers after the Jacob Blake shooting: “We still love this guy. country and this country don’t love us too. “

It is impossible to calculate whether the activism Trump induced played a decisive role in his defeat. But it is equally difficult to ignore the narrow margins in the battlefield states that have been hotbeds of tension in the movement. Wisconsin, where Trump lost by less than a percentage point, is home to the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks, whose decision to boycott a play-off game in August inspired a two-day sports blackout involving hundreds of athletes in the professional men’s and women’s basketball. baseball, soccer and tennis.

Pennsylvania, which eventually shifted the pick to Biden, is home to the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles, who were removed from the White House after their historic Super Bowl victory in February 2018. Last week, Rodney McLeod and several of his teammates rode a double-decker bus through the soccer-mad city in an initiative to encourage voter turnout and get people to polling places.

North Carolina, a traditional Trump stronghold that remains too close to call, was the site of a rally led by Oklahoma City Thunder star Chris Paul, who led some 2,500 people in a march to a Winston polling place. -Salem. The focus was not on partisanship but on commitment and participation, although it is not too difficult to guess which side the organizers support.

Of course, Trump was not without a following in American sports. The Ultimate Fighting Championship effectively became the sporting arm of the Maga regime with welterweights Colby Covington and Jorge Masvidal supporting him along the way. The three figures most responsible for the runaway rule of the New England Patriots over the past two decades: owner, Robert Kraft; the head coach, Bill Belichick; and veteran quarterback Tom Brady all displayed silent loyalty to Trump without receiving public endorsement. As Trump furiously marched down the stretch of the campaign with up to five rallies a day, he aggressively wooed the endorsement of athletes and frequently showed them to the crowd: wrestling icon Dan Gable in Des Moines, the baseball catcher Hall of Fame Mike Piazza in Reading, former New York Jets head coach Lou Holtz in Butler.

But when the United States went to the polls on Tuesday, more than 20 professional sports teams had turned their arenas and stadiums into voting centers at the urging of their players. In a contest in which Republicans tried to reduce turnout as desperately as Democrats sought to expand it, the advantage was clear.

The problems faced by those in the United States marginalized by race and class were destined to emerge and find expression in the mainstream channels of American life even before this particular president. But it was Trump who generated the greatest sense of urgency by bringing the fight to American athletes. And if the celebrations of LeBron, Rapinoe and company are any indicator, they were more than happy to end it.