President Donald Trump has made a serious effort to use sports to his political advantage. Just this year, he has invited Lionel Messi and his team to the White House for a photo opportunity, attended UFC matches, begun constructing a UFC arena on the South Lawn, and shared plans to attend an NBA Finals game, all while his unpopular Iran war marches on.
Now, with the FIFA World Cup less than a month away, one expert has revealed to HuffPost exactly how Trump is using the same "tried and true methods" that one notorious dictator used when his country hosted an early version of the tournament.
"If you look at the way [Benito] Mussolini, for example, cozied up to the athletes at the World Cup in 1934, he just wanted to be around these kinds of macho guys," said Jules Boykoff, a professor at Pacific University and an expert in international sports politics. "Well, you can see [that in] the same kind of thing that Trump does all the time."
Sportswashing Through the World Cup
In his new book "Red Card," Boykoff, a former professional soccer player who once represented the U.S. on the under-23 men's national team, explores how Trump has used this year's World Cup to engage in "sportswashing." The term refers to the 21st-century phenomenon of a person (or government) using sports to launder their (or its) image.
Boykoff argues that Trump has attempted to exploit the tournament with the help of Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, and what the author calls the FIFA "grift machine," a federation plagued by a corruption scandal that rocked the sport in the mid-2010s.
FIFA Peace Prize Controversy
Months ahead of the Iran war, Trump received the FIFA Peace Prize from Infantino, who cited the commander-in-chief's "unwavering commitment to advancing peace and unity" as the rationale behind the award. Boykoff called the prize the most blatant example of Trump trying to sportswash via the World Cup, which will be hosted in cities across the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
"As ludicrous as the prize might sound to a lot of people, to him, he looks important," Boykoff said.
Aside from Trump receiving the first-time trophy before his military action in Venezuela and Iran, Boykoff said Trump is also trying to achieve a "halo effect" from other "extraordinarily popular" events like the upcoming 2028 Los Angeles Olympics and next month's "Freedom 250" UFC fight card at the White House.
"The worse that Donald Trump's approval ratings get," Boykoff said, the more incentive he has to "cling to sports as a sort of political life raft."
Human Rights Concerns
With fears swirling over ICE's presence at matches as foreign fans plan to flood U.S. cities and stadiums next month, human rights groups have expressed grave concerns that a World Cup under Trump will serve as a "bonanza" of sportswashing, especially considering that the tournament is billed as an inclusive and welcoming place for fans of the beloved game. Critics say recent host countries, including Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022, have used the World Cup to distract from their controversial human rights records.
But the "tenets of sportswashing" have been in place for decades, Boykoff argues. Mussolini, for instance, used the 1934 World Cup to push fascism and introduced a prize of his own — the Coppa del Duce — for the winning Italian national team, one that was larger than the typical Jules Rimet Trophy awarded to victors at the time, Boykoff writes in his book. Other examples include Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympics and the 1978 World Cup under Argentina's military junta.
This year's World Cup, Boykoff noted, marks the first since FIFA required bidding countries to lay out human rights risks and how they look to address them in the lead-up to hosting matches following the federation's corruption scandal.
"And yet we can see that there are serious concerns over human rights," he said. "FIFA often says 'football unites the world,' but Trump is obviously putting lie to that by not allowing many people from countries that have qualified into the United States to even watch matches."
On top of fans of teams from participating nations like Haiti and Iran being barred from traveling to the U.S. due to Trump's travel ban, Boykoff fears the government could have "plenty of leeway to do all manner of things" as the matches carry high-level, special event assessment ratings that could be used to beef up federal law enforcement's presence at stadiums.
Boykoff said that while he loves the sport, he is concerned that FIFA, Infantino and Trump are stealing the people's game "right out from under us."
"Because I've seen the power of soccer, or football, in action, I'm of the belief that it can bring us together and it's worth fighting for," Boykoff said.
