Who's Ready To Pull Out Of World Cup And Humiliate Trump? Spain? Colombia? Denmark?
Let the booing, mockery, and boycotts commence!
Did you know the opening ceremonies for the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics are February 6? Boy, that snuck up fast. Most NATO and European Union nations will be participating. So will a whole lot of the nations of the Western Hemisphere. Those two groups, which overlap because of, among other things, Greenland, include just about everybody Donald Trump has threatened to invade and murder since he became president the second time. It’s especially a big deal since he barged into Venezuela and crossed into a new level of lawlessness, kidnapping a sovereign nation’s leader.
How loudly will American athletes be booed during those opening ceremonies? Will they be? They should be. (Sorry about your big moment, American athletes. We know you didn’t work this hard for that. But sometimes life’s timing doesn’t coincide perfectly with what’s going on in the world. And really, you should be booing your country’s actions right now too. Hey, did y’all hear an ICE Nazi just cold murdered another person in Minneapolis today?)
Then shortly after, starting June 11, it’s World Cup time, hosted jointly by the United States, Mexico, and Canada. We’ve already been talking about how, due to Donald Trump’s Gestapo immigration policies, his vicious campaign of racism, his kidnapping and disappearing of people with darker skin than the orange fecal matter he cakes on his face, it’s not safe for any international teams or fans to travel to the United States for the matches. But now Trump has invaded Venezuela, is threatening to invade Mexico (one of the countries co-hosting the World Cup), and has threatened in the recent past to try to seize and rape Canada. Again, that’s the two cohosts. Trump has threatened Colombia. And Cuba. And Greenland. And made quite clear he’s a mad king who thinks he should get to own the entire Western Hemisphere and use it and its people as his servants, as his playthings?
Brazil is currently ranked number five. Trump is already mad at Brazil for putting his fellow strongman Jair Bolsonaro in prison. Will Brazil’s team or its fans feel safe in the United States? Do they have opinions about Trump threatening to seize and murder the rest of the states in the Western Hemisphere?
Denmark, which controls Greenland, is ranked number 21. The number one team? That’d be Spain, where Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez isn’t shy about standing against Donald Trump. (Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Brazil, and Uruguay issued a joint communiqué condemning US actions in Venezuela. Know where a lot of Venezuelan refugees live? Places like Colombia, Spain, Brazil. Also lots in Peru.)
Will Spain feel comfortable sending athletes to the World Cup, or will it even want to send athletes to a country such as this? Or will they think, ay, maybe let’s just wait until next time, when the tournament is held somewhere less total garbage?
Others in the top 10: Argentina, France, England, Portugal, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Croatia. In the next 10 there’s Morocco and Colombia and Uruguay. Any country Donald Trump has acted like Hitler toward, if that country has a decent soccer team, it’s probably in there somewhere. (And yeah, Trump’s weird gross bailout buddy Javier Milei runs Argentina, but we imagine a lot of Argentina’s people aren’t too keen on Trump declaring himself king of their universe.)
What happens if one of these countries decides to break the seal, go first and pull out of the World Cup? What if top-ranked Spain does it, maybe after it sees Americans booed at the Olympics in Italy? They were already talking about it if Israel was allowed to compete, but Israel didn’t qualify. What if somebody else went first? Perhaps Colombia? Would there be a snowball effect? There should be. What about a scenario where countries refused to play matches in the United States?
We are just spitballing here, but what’s clear is that Donald Trump doesn’t deserve the glory of having special things like this happen in places with his name on them, and right now that includes the entirety of the US.
(Related: Did you all hear that banjo genius Béla Fleck has pulled out of a planned headlining concert at the Kennedy Center? Ooh, Ric Grenell is queening, stomping MAD.)
While we’re at it, we should note that the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics are looking more and more like the 1936 Berlin Olympics every day. God knows what atrocities Trump or — if he’s (more) incapacitated or dead by then — Stephen Miller and JD Vance will have visited upon the world by the time the torch is lit in LA.
Indeed, Trump and his minions declaring ownership of the Western Hemisphere, invading neighbors, threatening to invade other neighbors, is literally like allowing Berlin to host the 1936 Olympics. We all know what came just after that, but importantly, people also knew what had come before. There was a strong movement to boycott beforehand. But a couple Band-Aids and a pinky swear from Hitler not to discriminate against Jewish athletes won the day.
Will the world repeat that mistake in Los Angeles in 2028?
Again, we are writing this post as news continues to break of a white Nazi ICE agent murdering a woman in cold blood because they were mad she was perceived to be interfering with their ability to terrorize, kidnap, and disappear people for having dark skin, for speaking Spanish.
The Trump regime deserves to be humiliated and rejected by all decent people within its borders, and all outside of them. As it happens, this is the kind of humiliation and rejection that hits President Starfucker hard. He desperately wants to be cool, desperately craves the winning-by-association that comes along with getting to be up close and personal with winning athletes, of being in the special box at the most elite sporting events. If real boycotts start, he will lose his shit.
What a breathtaking byproduct it would be if Trump manages to fully fuck his World Cup moment, and right after FIFA has just finished sucking him off and inventing a peace prize for him and everything!
Dave Zirin wrote recently at The Nation about how the American sports world has decidedly not been covering itself in glory during Trump 2.0. It’s really, really fucking shameful. With few notable exceptions, American athletes, teams, leagues, and sports media have done nothing, or worse, to stand up to a regime that’s exponentially more vile and dangerous to Americans and to the world than its first outing was. Sadly, we have no reason to expect any better from them in 2026, 2027, or 2028.
But the Olympics and the nations of the world that are better at soccer than the US, those things are by definition not the American sports world. They don’t have to be cowards the way the American sports world apparently thinks it does. And again, there’s a hell of a lot of Latin America represented. And Europe/NATO. Also Africa and the Middle East, just tons of places Donald Trump calls “shithole countries.”
May the boos and the boycotts commence.
OPEN THREAD.
Want to read more Evan than just what’s at Wonkette? Visit The Moral High Ground and subscribe to it!
Follow me on Instagram!
And on BlueSky!
And on Facebook!
Fort Sumter on the horizon if Donny doesn't get the fuck out of Minnesota:
***
Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) had a blunt message for Immigration and Customs Enforcement after an officer was caught on video fatally shooting a woman as she appeared to drive away in her car: get out of our state.
Furthermore, he said in his announcement, he stands ready to activate the Minnesota National Guard to protect people from violence.
"From here on, I have a very simple message. We do not need any further help from the federal government," said Walz. "To Donald Trump and [Homeland Security Secretary] Kristi Noem: You've done enough."
"There's nothing more important than Minnesotans' safety," said Walz. "I've issued a warning order to prepare the Minnesota National Guard. We have soldiers in training and prepared to be deployed if necessary."
"I remind you, a warning order is a heads-up for folks, and these National Guard troops are our National Guard troops," Walz continued. "They're teachers in your community. They're business owners. They're construction professionals. They are Minnesotans."
He added, "Minnesota will not allow our community to be used as a prop in a national political fight. We will not take the bait."
I don’t want the Olympics in LA in 2028. I don’t want them in SLC in 2034. We do not deserve to have them. The United States elected a fascist administration that turned us into an international pariah within days of taking office; we can’t just keep pretending that everything is okay.
Also, I say this as an Angeleno observing the one year anniversary of the devastating Los Angeles wildfires. The city could really use the additional tourist revenues that the World Cup and Olympics would bring to aid the rebuilding process (especially since international tourism to the area is down—gee, I wonder why?), but having Trump presiding over either opening ceremony taints our city by association. We don’t need that.