Ominous shadow of Donald Trump already looming over 2028 LA Olympics
A FIRE RAGES: LA28 is a little under two years away. Pic: Frederic J. Brown/Getty
Donald Trump’s shadow is long, his influence pervasive. Football knows this now.
The World Cup ended less than two weeks ago with the US president refusing to exit the stage as Spain lifted the trophy. Now it seems like we’ll never be shot of the man and his retinue after news of Gianni Infantino’s latest blatant bombshell.
Revelations that the FIFA president is aiming to sell World Cup stakes to an investment company run by the brother of Trump’s son-in-law is both jaw-dropping and perfectly expected all at the same time.
This nightmare is only beginning and the Olympics should take note.
We’re more or less at the halfway mark between the ending of the last Games in Paris and the start of a 2028 version that will be held in Los Angeles, California: a city and a state that endure a fractious relationship with the orange one in the White House.
The scope for friction is enormous.
Infantino has adopted the role of lickspittle with the Trump regime and yet the World Cup, for all its success, was held hostage throughout by the egotism and corrosive influence of a man who never passes up the chance to see an angle and to sow some discord.
Trump was at it long before the tournament kicked off in Mexico City. He had threatened to pull games from Democrat cities - San Francisco and Seattle sitting particularly square in his sights - if he deemed it necessary on safety grounds.
Long-held concerns over a confrontational immigration policy proved all too real with fans from targeted nations denied entry, as well as Somali referee Omar Artan, while the Iranian team was treated abominably by the US administration throughout.
US Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin admitted during a World Cup security briefing that he was "just glad they're done, and they're not coming back” after Iran had been eliminated from the tournament.
“I was so happy when we were able to pull their visas and said they could leave the US soil, and I might've sung a song or two or maybe even danced a happy dance," added the US official after unprecedented travel restrictions had been imposed on the Iranian team.
This, let’s not forget, was four months on from Trump’s launch of Operation Epic Fury which was the title given to America’s illegal and ongoing attacks on Iran. For the first time in history, a World Cup host was at open war with a competing nation.
Football came away tainted by his every touch.
Think of the Balogun disgrace. Think of the fact that FIFA rented offices in his Trump Tower. Think of the made-up peace prize Infantino handed him. Think of the FIFA president’s cringing muppetry with that MAGA hat at the awful Board of Peace initiative.
And then think of him refusing to leave the stage on finals night when a Spanish team representing a nation he had labelled a “wasted cause” and a “terrible partner in Nato, a country with which he had threatened to cut off trade relations, lifted the trophy.
And so to the Games.
The World Cup may be a big fish but it’s a tiddler in some ways compared to the white whale that is an Olympics movement which brings together over 200 counties compared to just 48, and almost ten times as many athletes.
IOC president Kirsty Coventry has taken a very different approach to Trump than her FIFA counterpart. There have been no meetings and no public sycophancy with the Zimbabwean giving an interesting response when asked about him last year.
"I have been dealing with, let's say, difficult men in high positions since I was 20 years old," Coventry said.
Casey Wasserman, chair of the LA organising committee, has been more attentive to Trump whom he has praised publicly and even presented with a batch of gold, silver and bronze medals from the last LA Games back in 1984.
Wasserman has withstood calls to stand down over links to the Epstein files via emails shared with Ghislaine Maxwell. Among those who called for him to go at the time were current LA mayor Karen Bass.
Bass and California governor Gavin Newsom have been at loggerheads with Trump for much longer via bitter exchanges on the back of last year’s wildfires and the use of the military in response to immigration protests in LA last summer.
Trump’s rhetoric at the time was that “Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated” had he not sent in those forces and let’s not forget that, like the World Cup, he has threatened in the past to move the Games from the city.
That won’t happen, can’t happen, but every utterance holds the potential to create division and make life difficult. That influence is apparent even now, two years out from the opening ceremony, and with his mind elsewhere.
The Clean Energy Wire website has reported how corporate backers are staying schtum when it comes to green initiatives surrounding LA28 lest they anger an administration that has rowed back on environmental protections and championed fossil fuels.
And sporting administrators from around the world have been taken aback at some of the ‘USA, USA’ rhetoric seen and heard at briefings being held through the Olympic cycle. Bombastic predictions of a ‘best Games ever’ are being rattled off with impunity.
If nothing else, Trump and the culture wars he has fomented this past decade have the potential to inject an air of angst, suspicion and disharmony in a sporting event that is, at least in theory, supposed to be the opposite of all that.
We’ve seen this already in the Olympic sphere.
Go back to the Winter Games in Milan-Cortino earlier this year and maybe the biggest story of it all was the focus on the presence of ICE officials in northern Italy. This after Trump had rubbed a succession of nominal “allies” up the wrong way.
He had already clashed with Norway over what he saw as the failure to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, his covetous eyes had been turned towards both Canada and Greenland, and that’s not to forget the various iterations of the trade wars undertaken.
Trump’s ability to divide as he rules was framed in high relief during those Games when US freestyle skier Hunter Hess admitted to mixed emotions at wearing the US uniform given the direction the country’s political journey had taken.
Trump, predictably, led the chorus of rage in response, describing Hess as “a real loser” before inviting the more politically pliant gold-medal winning men’s hockey team to the White House and praising them as special champions.
A small taste of what to expect in two years’ time.
