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Trump has embraced the sports world. Has it embraced him back?

Trump has embraced the sports world. Has it embraced him back?

The president’s first term featured notable rifts with athletes. From the Super Bowl to UFC, his second term has been different.

Zoë Petersen, Deseret News

When President Donald Trump signed his college sports executive order on Thursday, it marked the president’s latest efforts to immerse himself into the sports world.

The executive order was the second sports-related headline Trump made in the last seven days, following his call on the NFL’s Washington Commanders to adopt their previous name, the Redskins.

Since Inauguration Day six months ago, Trump has attended some of the country’s biggest sporting events, courted prominent sports figures and weighed in on sports-related debates and issues.

Here’s a look at the president’s relationship with the sports world in his second term.

Wielding presidential power

Trump hasn’t shied away from wielding his presidential power to influence sports decision makers. His recent executive order as well as the one he signed in February to block transgender women from participating in women’s sports are proof.

But he’s also entered multiple issues and conversations beyond the executive office.

During the NFL draft, when Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders, a presumed first-round pick, went undrafted in the first three rounds, Trump, via social media, called NFL owners “stupid” for passing on the quarterback and said that Sanders “should be ‘picked’ IMMEDIATELY by a team that wants to WIN.”

Sanders was drafted the next day by the Cleveland Browns in the fifth round. Once in Cleveland, Sanders told reporters he was “thankful” for the president’s post, in a video shared by NFL Network’s Andrew Siciliano.

When asked if the president took credit for Sanders getting drafted, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “the facts speak for themselves.”

“All I will say is the president put out a statement and a few rounds later, he was drafted,” Leavitt said.

Whether or not that’s true, the president did influence another sports-related decision.

In February, Trump had previously said he would pardon baseball’s all-time hits leader Pete Rose, who was on baseball’s lifetime ban list. Then a month after MLB commissioner Rob Manfred met with Trump in April, the commissioner lifted the ban on Rose, who died in September 2024.

“The President was one of a number of voices that was supportive of the idea that this was the right decision,” Manfred told The Athletic. “Obviously, I have respect for the office and the advice that he gave. I paid attention to (it). But I had a lot of other people that were weighing in on the topic as well.”

Trump appears to be hoping to influence the NFL’s Commanders — or what he called in his Truth Social post, the “Washington Whatevers” — and MLB’s Cleveland Guardians with regards to their nicknames.

The president said “there is a big clamoring for” the Commanders and Guardians to become the Redskins and the Indians, respectively, again.

“Our great Indian people, in massive numbers, want this to happen. Their heritage and prestige is systematically being taken away from them. Times are different now than they were three or four years ago,” he wrote.

The president then followed up his post with another in which he said he “may put a restriction on (the Commanders)” if the team doesn’t change its name back and that he “won’t make a deal for them to build a Stadium in Washington.”

The president’s posts received support from Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who wrote on X, “I agree with President Trump — it’s time to BRING BACK the Redskins."

Former Redskins players Jason Buck and Scott Turner, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, also voiced their support for Trump’s comments.

Buck, a former BYU defensive lineman who won a Super Bowl with the Redskins, had called on Trump to back a team name change just the day prior to the president’s posts. On Monday, Buck told Fox News that it was “a dream come true” to see Trump’s involvement.

“I’m a Native American, so I’m a real Redskin and a proud one, and a proud Washington Redskin from the glory days of Joe Gibbs,” he said.

But not all Native Americans share Buck’s enthusiasm.

The National Congress of American Indians released a statement on X, saying: “We unequivocally oppose President Trump’s call ... to reinstate their former, racist names.”

In 2013, Trump criticized former President Barack Obama regarding his stance on Washington’s NFL team’s nickname.

“President should not be telling the Washington Redskins to change their name — our country has far bigger problems! Focus on them, not nonsense," Trump wrote at the time.

On Monday, Leavitt said the president was serious about the stadium restriction.

“As you know, sports is one of the many passions of this president, and he wants to see the name of that team changed,” Leavitt said.

Why would the president get involved in that discussion?

“I think you’ve seen the president gets involved in a lot of things that most presidents have not. He’s a nontraditional president,” Leavitt said.

Presidential presence

That passion and nontraditional approach has been especially evident in Trump’s second term.

In February, Trump became the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl, according to ESPN, when he watched the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Kansas City Chiefs in New Orleans.

Ahead of the big game, Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce called it “a great honor” to play in front of the president ”no matter who the president is.” His quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, expressed a similar sentiment.

“It’s always cool to be able to play in front of a sitting-president, someone that is at the top position of our country. It’s cool to hear that he’s seen me play football and respects the game that I play,” he said.

Trump went on to attend the Daytona 500, two UFC fights and the FIFA Club World Cup final earlier this month.

Newsweek reported that between Inauguration Day and the Club World Cup final, the president had made seven sports-related trips. For comparison, he had made five campaign or political-related visits and three disaster response trips in that time frame.

Trump’s Club World Cup attendance went viral.

On the one-year anniversary of his assassination attempt, he joined FIFA President Gianni Infantino on the field for the trophy presentation. (They had shared a box suite during the match.)

It’s not uncommon for the host nation’s head of state to join Infantino on stage and shake the athletes’ hands after they receive their medals.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron did so at the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Paris. Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the Emir of Qatar, did the same at the 2022 World Cup.

But Trump took it a step further when he stayed onstage for Chelsea’s trophy lift, a moment traditionally reserved for the winning team’s players and coaching staff.

Chelsea’s Reece James appeared confused by the president’s choice to stay but ultimately lifted the trophy anyway.

“Before, they told me that he was going to present the trophy and then exit the stage, and I thought that he was going to exit the stage but he wanted to stay,” James told reporters afterwards, per Sky Sports News.

Even when Trump isn’t physically in attendance, he finds a way to be present.

Right after Derrick Lewis won a heavyweight contest on UFC’s Fight Night on July 12 — the day before the Club World Cup final — Dana White, the CEO of UFC, handed Lewis a phone.

Lewis remained on the phone while he was declared the winner. In his post-fight interview, it was revealed that he was on the phone with Trump.

‘Ubiquitous presidency’

Why would Trump be so present at sporting events? Is it a sign that his relationship with the sports world and athletes has changed?

Not necessarily, according to Kevin Coe, a communications professor at the University of Utah who researches political communication.

Coe told the Deseret News it’s “more that we’re seeing the continued growth of what scholars call the ‘ubiquitous presidency,’ where presidents seek new audiences in nontraditional spaces, such as sports and entertainment.”

He said Trump has employed similar strategies used by Obama, who would unveil his March Madness brackets on ESPN’s SportsCenter.

“Presidents look for audiences anywhere they can find them, and sports are often more popular than traditional politics,” Coe said.

There will be plenty of opportunities and audiences for the president to continue his “ubiquitous presidency” when it comes to sports.

The NFL draft will also come to the nation’s capital in 2027 for the first time ever. One million fans are expected to descend on the National Mall for the three-day event, according to ESPN.

It wouldn’t be a surprise if Trump made some sort of appearance.

After all, some NFL players adopted his signature “Trump dance” as their touchdown celebrations last season, as the Deseret News previously reported.

A UFC fight will also make its way to D.C. next Fourth of July for the nation’s 250th birthday. Trump announced the fight would be held at the White House, and according to White, every UFC fighter is excited about the opportunity.

“Everybody wants to fight this fight,” White told Happy Punch.

Both retired fighters Jon Jones and Conor McGregor expressed their interest in being on the card for the fight.

Courting the sports world

In his second term, Trump has courted some of the biggest athletes, a noticeable shift from his first term which included feuds with stars like Stephen Curry and LeBron James.

In 2017, Curry said he wouldn’t visit the White House if the Golden State Warriors were invited after winning the NBA Finals. Trump took to Twitter to say the “invitation is withdrawn.”

James responded to Trump’s tweet by calling him a “bum”

“Going to White House was a great honor until you showed up,” James said.

When Curry and the Warriors won the NBA Finals again in 2019, the team met with Obama instead of Trump, per The Mercury News.

No NBA or WNBA team has visited Trump at the White House in either term.

The Oklahoma City Thunder could become the first. The Boston Celtics, who won last year, visited while former President Joe Biden was in office. The New York Liberty, who won last season’s WNBA Finals, instead visited with the Obamas, per the New York Post.

Trump’s rocky first term relationship extended to the NFL. In 2018, the president canceled the Eagles’ Super Bowl visit after the White House learned “that the great majority of players would not attend the event,” per a White House statement.

“They disagree with their president because he insists that they proudly stand for the national anthem, hand on heart, in honor of the great men and women of our military and the people of our country,” Trump said in his own statement.

While there are still athletes who remain outspoken about Trump following his reelection, others haven’t shied away from being associated with the president.

This year, the NHL’s Florida Panthers and MLB’s Los Angeles Dodgers visited the White House to celebrate their championship seasons.

Mookie Betts, who skipped the Boston Red Sox’s White House visit in Trump’s first term, was among the notable Dodgers players to attend.

“I’m not trying to make this political by any means at all. All it is, is just me being with my team to celebrate something. It’s a privilege to get an invitation like this. I just want to be there with them,” Betts said, per ESPN.

Earlier this month, Trump met with brothers and NFL head coaches Jim and John Harbaugh at the White House.

John Harbaugh was asked about the visit at the Baltimore Ravens’ first day of training camp on Wednesday.

“I promise you I root for our president. I want our president to be successful just like I want my quarterback to be successful and I want my team to be successful, and it was an amazing experience. It’s not often you get invited and you get a chance to do something like that as a family,” John Harbaugh said.

He also noted that he has met with three former presidents.

Eagles running back Saquon Barkley shared a similar sentiment as the Ravens head coach when he spent the day before the Eagles’ White House visit golfing with Trump at his golf course.

In response to backlash, Barkley took to social media, writing on X that, “Maybe I just respect the office, not a hard concept to understand,” noting he golfed with Obama last fall.

“Athletes, like many public figures outside of traditional political roles, have to determine the costs and benefits of publicly expressing their political views,” said Coe, the University of Utah communications professor. “Trump’s political and cultural role was perhaps somewhat less clear during his first term than it is now, so athletes who support or oppose him might be more convinced of those positions than they once were.”

These associations with or “endorsements” of Trump from sports figures will have little effect on the president’s standing, according to Coe.

“Most people’s attitudes about Trump are quite fixed, and it’s unlikely that any given athlete’s views will change that,” he said. “Major celebrity endorsements during a campaign (such as Taylor Swift endorsing Kamala Harris) can aid fundraising and mobilization efforts, but still tend not to change people’s attitudes per se.”

Despite that, the president’s embracement of the sports world likely won’t end any time soon.

Trump’s second presidential term coincides with the country hosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup and 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, some of the world’s most-celebrated sporting events.

With these events in the U.S., Trump will have an even bigger stage available to him.

Category: General Sports

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