These days, there is just nothing under the sun that President Donald Trump doesn’t see as an opportunity to attack blue cities and states. It’s terrifying and jarring, but it is also beginning to feel kinda rote. He’s a one-trick pony, but for fascism.
But once you’ve deployed your brownshirts on the streets of multiple major American cities, threatening to take away a World Cup match or whatever no longer seems quite so scary.
So, while nine months ago, the specter of Trump saying he would consider relocating World Cup games out of Boston because Mayor Michelle Wu is “radical left” might have seemed like a threat that packed a real wallop, these days, it engenders more of a “what else you got?” kind of response from those Trump is threatening.
Yes, every blue city is a hotbed of crime, and yes, it is always the Democratic mayor’s fault, and yes, antifa, and yes, street takeovers and blah, blah, blah. Don’t you ever get tired of hearing yourself say the same thing? When you’ve declared that the existence of cashless bail is a “government-backed crime spree” in Washington and New York City, you’ve already turned the volume up to 11.
With the World Cup, it’s not even that he’s just making similar threats—he literally made the same threats just three weeks ago, saying he would move matches from cities that were “even a little bit dangerous.”
Perhaps that’s why this time, various officials in World Cup host cities are just sorta yawning. Lisa Gillmor, the mayor of Santa Clara, California, responded to the threat to relocate things out of San Francisco with “Any suggestion that Santa Clara is unsafe is simply not based in fact. We have been preparing for these games for nearly three years, and we will be proud to welcome the world to Santa Clara for the World Cup next year.”
Gillmor also reminded Trump that the Bay Area has a long history of safely hosting major sporting events. Another unnamed official told Politico, “Our agreements are between FIFA and the host cities. These are agreements that have been entered into back in 2017 and 2018. The bid itself was endorsed by the first Trump administration.”
Trump has tried to insist that he could make this happen because he has the ear of FIFA head Gianni Infantino, who is, like Trump, a corrupt nightmare. According to Trump, “If somebody is doing a bad job and I feel there are unsafe conditions, I would call Gianni, who’s phenomenal, and I would say, ‘Let’s move it to another location.’ He wouldn’t love to do it, but he would do it very easily.”
Sure, so let’s say you get your pal Gianni to agree to pack up the World Cup and take matches away from Seattle or Boston or Atlanta or Houston or Miami or New York or Philadelphia or … you get the picture. Is the World Cup going to be in Little Rock? Boise? Bakersfield? Plano? This is toddler nonsense.
Even more absurd is the pretense that he could somehow punish Los Angeles by relocating the 2028 Olympics: “If I thought LA was not going to be prepared properly, I would move it to another location if I had to,” though it would require “a different kind of permission.”
Related | Vance hints at expansion of Trump’s police state
Trump remains furious that he cannot bring blue cities to heel, but in some ways, his startling and illegal occupations of major American cities make the “we’re gonna take away your Olympics!” threat seem so much less serious.
Go ahead, take the Olympics! Take the World Cup! You’re already terrorizing immigrants in all those cities and threatening to do even more! Once you’ve spent months disappearing people off the streets of Los Angeles, do you really think shouting “NO OLYMPICS FOR YOU” is what’s gonna really win the day?
These days, there is just nothing under the sun that President Donald Trump doesn’t see as an opportunity to attack blue cities and states. It’s terrifying and jarring, but it is also beginning to feel kinda rote. He’s a one-trick pony, but for fascism.
But once you’ve deployed your brownshirts on the streets of multiple major American cities, threatening to take away a World Cup match or whatever no longer seems quite so scary.
So, while nine months ago, the specter of Trump saying he would consider relocating World Cup games out of Boston because Mayor Michelle Wu is “radical left” might have seemed like a threat that packed a real wallop, these days, it engenders more of a “what else you got?” kind of response from those Trump is threatening.
“Heard ya loud and clear” by Pedro Molina
Yes, every blue city is a hotbed of crime, and yes, it is always the Democratic mayor’s fault, and yes, antifa, and yes, street takeovers and blah, blah, blah. Don’t you ever get tired of hearing yourself say the same thing? When you’ve declared that the existence of cashless bail is a “government-backed crime spree” in Washington and New York City, you’ve already turned the volume up to 11.
With the World Cup, it’s not even that he’s just making similar threats—he literally made the same threats just three weeks ago, saying he would move matches from cities that were “even a little bit dangerous.”
Perhaps that’s why this time, various officials in World Cup host cities are just sorta yawning. Lisa Gillmor, the mayor of Santa Clara, California, responded to the threat to relocate things out of San Francisco with “Any suggestion that Santa Clara is unsafe is simply not based in fact. We have been preparing for these games for nearly three years, and we will be proud to welcome the world to Santa Clara for the World Cup next year.”
Gillmor also reminded Trump that the Bay Area has a long history of safely hosting major sporting events. Another unnamed official told Politico, “Our agreements are between FIFA and the host cities. These are agreements that have been entered into back in 2017 and 2018. The bid itself was endorsed by the first Trump administration.”
Trump has tried to insist that he could make this happen because he has the ear of FIFA head Gianni Infantino, who is, like Trump, a corrupt nightmare. According to Trump, “If somebody is doing a bad job and I feel there are unsafe conditions, I would call Gianni, who’s phenomenal, and I would say, ‘Let’s move it to another location.’ He wouldn’t love to do it, but he would do it very easily.”
Sure, so let’s say you get your pal Gianni to agree to pack up the World Cup and take matches away from Seattle or Boston or Atlanta or Houston or Miami or New York or Philadelphia or … you get the picture. Is the World Cup going to be in Little Rock? Boise? Bakersfield? Plano? This is toddler nonsense.
Even more absurd is the pretense that he could somehow punish Los Angeles by relocating the 2028 Olympics: “If I thought LA was not going to be prepared properly, I would move it to another location if I had to,” though it would require “a different kind of permission.”
Related | Vance hints at expansion of Trump’s police state
Trump remains furious that he cannot bring blue cities to heel, but in some ways, his startling and illegal occupations of major American cities make the “we’re gonna take away your Olympics!” threat seem so much less serious.
Go ahead, take the Olympics! Take the World Cup! You’re already terrorizing immigrants in all those cities and threatening to do even more! Once you’ve spent months disappearing people off the streets of Los Angeles, do you really think shouting “NO OLYMPICS FOR YOU” is what’s gonna really win the day?
