Huge international sporting events on the level of the FIFA World Cup are a prime opportunity for a country to make a good impression on the world, but as a new piece from MS NOW argued, President Donald Trump took the perfect chance for the U.S. to do so and "blew it."
In the Sunday piece, MS NOW's Zeeshan Aleem shared his own experience visiting Russia for the 2018 World Cup, calling the experience a "breeze" that left him rooting for Russia throughout the game and lamenting "the rich Russian culture that rarely gets covered in the Western press." This trip, one of the greatest of his life, was a prime example of "sportswashing," he explained, a phenomenon that involves "governments staging sports events to launder their reputation and divert attention from their misdeeds."
"President Donald Trump was handed a golden opportunity to boost America’s image to international visitors here for the 2026 World Cup," Aleem wrote. "He is the reason, after all, the world is suffering from higher oil prices. He can’t find his way out of a mortifying war he’s clearly losing, tourism is plummeting, and his international reputation is in swift decline. But he blew it."
He continued: "Trump achieved the opposite of sportswashing. His policies were hostile to visitors, he injected politics into the tournament, and he even brazenly meddled with what was happening on the pitch. In sum, his style of hosting cast the U.S. in an unusually negative light during the most widely watched cultural event in the world. Trump’s inability to see beyond his most reflexive impulses to throw red meat to his base sabotaged the larger opportunity to impress the world and soften his image. His failure to be the welcoming, gracious tournament host mirrors the way he operates with increasing frequency in domestic politics — blinkered, self-defeating. Trump’s modus operandi is one own goal after another, and an embarrassment for the United States."
Trump notably broke the trend of countries relaxing their immigration policies in order to welcome foreign World Cup spectators with open arms. Aleem noted that this was even true for past host countries like Russia and Qatar, which have similarly restrictive tendencies with their immigration laws. Instead, the U.S. made the trip "hellish, if not impossible" for many, with visiting fans from over a quarter of the event's participating nations running into bans, high rates of visa rejections or restrictions."
"A Somali referee was not allowed in the U.S. to do his job," Aleem detailed. "A number of individual players, including team members from Iraq and Haiti, struggled to get visas or were detained in airports. Many sports journalists from the Middle East and Africa were denied entry. The Iranian soccer team got treated like a band of murderers instead of elite professional athletes. Many members of the team’s support staff were barred from entering the U.S., and the team was forced to move its base training camp from the U.S. to Mexico."
He concluded: "None of this is to say that most fans who made it to the U.S. didn’t have a grand time and experience some heart-warming cultural exchanges. But the good feelings of our visitors happened despite Trump and his myriad offenses. The tournament succeeded in generating joy despite Trump’s unholy alliance with Infantino. Instead of allowing those visitors to focus on the best of America, he showed them the worst of himself
