The Red Card

 You have to hand it to Donald Trump for making being shameless into an art form. Mr. Trump has built a very successful career by claiming certain things and the moment he gets called out, he complains that the world is against him. The man made himself everyone’s ideal of a tycoon by playing a tycoon on TV. The world got so worked up with him being a “rich” and “self-made” man but didn’t notice that his career in business ended up sending businesses through bankruptcy courts the way most people ended up going through the revolving doors of hotels.

Mr. Trump used this playbook when he moved into politics, with a twist. His message was simple – every problem you have is someone else’s fault and I’ll keep them out. A certain demographic ate it up. His next great move was even better; he announced that he was going to win and any defeat was “rigged.”

To Mr. Trump’s credit, this has been very successful. He won his first election and if you look at things through the eyes of COVID and Mr. Trump’s mismanagement of COVID, he still managed to get 74 million votes too many and he came back and won in 2024. Whatever one might think, Mr. Trump has been successful despite not selling any form of facts.

The latest scam came from a red card, when Donald Trump called up FIFA President, Gianni Infanto to “look at” a red card that was issued to the US’s star striker, Florian Balogun. Mr. Trump says he never actually made a call to tell Mr. Infanto what to do. However, one might point out that when the US President calls you to “look into” something, its pretty much an order.

Much has been said about this. My main point is that, its “sad” and very “pathetic” that a head of state and government should be calling the head of a sports governing body to get them to “look into” a decision made by a referee in a game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZBJj9IPVvE

 

To put it crudely, this is an embarrassment for both FIFA and the US President. So, how did this play out. Well, it happened on the field. The US got four to one drubbing.

Mr. Trump has been notably silent now. Not said anything about a “rigged” game. There is one problem for Mr. Trump – everything happened on the field. Every moment of the game was seen by the 60 plus thousand spectators and that’s before you take into account the numbers who watched the game on TV. You can’t claim things were “hidden” or “rigged.”

Mr Trump may be able to convince people that he’s a victimised blob in his political career. Thankfully he can’t pull that off in the sporting world.