MAGA Loves Trump’s World Cup Meddling—Until We Lose
They cheered the president for helping to get a red card overturned—but once the U.S. team lost, soccer became “gay.”
WHILE MUCH OF THE SOCCER WORLD was aghast that Donald Trump would meddle in the World Cup—prodding FIFA to suspend the one-game ban of American striker Folarin Balogun—pro-Trump media figures were delighted. To them, this was simply a new way the president could flex his heavy-handed shakedown tactics on the world stage.
“Thank you, President Trump!” MAGA personality Benny Johnson wrote on X.
Never one to turn down a paycheck, Johnson turned his praise into a paid ad, including a link to the Polymarket odds for the game against Belgium, where, remarkably, the U.S. men’s national team was favored to win.
Well, the odds were a bit off. The U.S. lost the match in embarrassing fashion, 4–1. And the Trump movement’s interest in soccer proved to be short-lived. Quite suddenly, MAGA decided they didn’t care about soccer anymore!
After the brutal loss, popular MAGA memester “End Wokeness” was relieved that it was time to move on from the World Cup.
“The good news is that we no longer have to pretend to care about soccer,” the account’s operator wrote.
Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, who spent the day dunking on anyone registering discomfort with Trump pressuring FIFA—accusing all of Europe of “crying” about it—stewed about being duped about how good the U.S. team actually was.
“I feel like soccer people owe me an apology if Im being honest,” he posted. “I go and stick my neck out there for you guys and get embarrassed like this? Not good”
And Vince Dao, a MAGA commenter, took the defeat particularly poorly. “Soccer is gay and retarded again,” he posted. In fact, a lot of conservatives decided after the match that soccer was, well, gay.
THE EPISODE WAS YET ANOTHER reminder of how eagerly the MAGA and MAGA-adjacent internet will adopt any cause Trump champions—regardless of how haphazardly he does it. And how those causes often dramatically backfire on them.
The entire episode began over the weekend, when Trump took the unprecedented step of calling FIFA’s president to complain about Balogun being suspended from playing in the Belgium game after receiving a red card in a previous game. Soon after Trump’s call, Balogun’s suspension was lifted (for a probationary period of one year).
Prominent conservative figures, normally accustomed to deriding soccer as a sport that is basically un-American, treated Trump’s call to FIFA president Gianni Infantino as another epic win for the administration. Tyler Bowyer, the chief operating officer of Turning Point Action, declared that Americans who planned to root for Belgium at Monday’s game to protest Trump’s action should deport themselves.
A post from Loomer Unleashed, the X account for right-wing activist Laura Loomer’s podcast, declared that Trump critics were “triggered” by the president’s attempts to keep Balogun in the game.
When a liberal account criticized Trump’s call, the former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson, who has been embraced by the MAGA right for his criticism of vaccines and marijuana legalization, replied, “Oh, do shut up.” In case his meaning wasn’t clear enough, he added: “People like you are why the Democrats can’t get any traction no matter what @realDonaldTrump does[.] Let the guy play, he did nothing wrong and the call was a joke. Or would you rather your national team lose over it?”
Traditionally, American presidents have not been expected to use their influence to sway World Cup proceedings; as far as we know, none ever has. But after the president’s phone call, pro-Trump personalities began treating meddling in soccer games as a key White House function.
“If Kamala was President, the USA wouldn’t even have made the Top 32,” tweeted conservative influencer Ada Lluch, appearing to imply other interference from Trump before the phone call about the red card.
The conservative effort to reframe Trump’s actions as the political equivalent of playing the game itself in a more rough-shouldered way—the political equivalent of a Roy Keane-type destroyer—was striking in part because Trump admitted he only recently learned what a red card was.
“He [Balogun] got a red card. I didn’t know what that meant, I didn’t think it meant much” Trump said Monday. “Then I started hearing that that means you can’t play in the next game.”
BUT MAGA’S EMBRACE of the beautiful game wasn’t the only bizarro part of the story: Pro-Trump figures were rallying behind Balogun even though the striker, raised in London to parents of Nigerian descent, wouldn’t be an American citizen if not for birthright citizenship.
“We talk all . . . about birthright citizenship, we finally got a benefit from it,” Breitbart editor-in-chief Alex Marlow said on his radio show, adding that he suspected the referee who gave Balogun a red card was corrupt.
Indeed, for Republicans, the real soccer scandal of the weekend had nothing to do with Trump at all. They were fuming about Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) wearing a Mexico jersey to watch the England-Mexico game with Mexico fans at a Tucson watch party.
“Modern Democratic Party: wear another country’s jersey and post a photo of yourself taking a photo of yourself,” wrote pro-Trump commentator Scott Jennings.
Loomer also jumped on the Kelly picture, not because of the jersey he was wearing but because he was getting “handsy” with a woman in it. “A US Senator who represents a BORDER STATE wearing Mexico’s jersey is bad enough, but I thought he was ‘super loyal’ to his medically brain dead wife who was shot in the head?”
Kelly’s wife, former Rep. Gabby Giffords, responded with a post confirming that it was, in fact, her in the picture:
Even the Senate got in on the Balogun excitement ahead of the USMNT’s game against Belgium. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), insisted he was “not the biggest soccer fan,” but took a shot at Trump critics who couldn’t appreciate the president’s possibly untoward efforts to achieve World Cup glory for the United States.
“I wish liberals could put their country ahead of their politics just once, but I guess that’s asking too much,” Cotton posted.
But if MAGA suddenly found itself in love with soccer thanks to Trump’s brave efforts to overturn a red card, it was a short-lived fling.
Internet curmudgeon Gunther Eagleman, who had fire alarm-emojied the news that Trump had “helped get that bogus red card reversed” was quick to dump the sport after the fiasco on the field.
“Hey @Grok,” he asked, “how many more days until the real football season starts?”
His fellow online traveler, Nick Sortor, who was nearly orgasming over Balogun starting “despite the Belgians whining about it,” was similarly quick to dismiss the sport by the time the actual game was over.
“Here’s some good news, my fellow Americans,” he posted, “We’re less than TWO MONTHS AWAY from the REAL football season.”
Perhaps this was all inevitable. Conservatives have long looked at soccer as a European sport. And they’ve long looked at Europe as an effeminate continent not on the same plane as brute America. But I can’t help but think some of this was just deeply personal. Having embraced Trumpian bullying of FIFA, they were suddenly attached to the success of the U.S. squad. And that squad’s success had, in turn, become an emblem for Trump’s ability to shape world competition in America’s favor.
When Belgium’s striker Romelu Lukaku scored the fourth and final goal in extra time and celebrated it with a “fuck you” to the crowd and a mocking Trump dance, it had to have stung on a deeper level than just patriotic pride.
I have a serious question. What percentage of MAGA males live in their mothers’ basements? I’m getting the impression that these people have very little exposure to anything not accessed via a screen.
Still waiting for Trump to announce we won and there's compelling evidence to show the match was rigged.