Red, White, and Ball: Sportswashing in the Age of Trump
Edited by Joey Chan, Elizabeth Adams, Owen Andrews, and Sarah Ahmad
If you have observed sports in recent years, you may be aware of the term “sportswashing.” Pundits, fans, and media ascribe the word to governments that use sports and competitions to improve their reputation harmed by wrongdoing. Sportswashing could be considered part of a nation's “soft power.” Hosting a significant, globally recognized event allows a nation to put a different foot forward and to be renowned on the national or international level for reasons other than the dishonorable conduct the nation or leader has committed. For instance, if a nation’s leader appears on television during a primetime sporting event, as Trump did on November 10, that could be considered sportswashing to distract from the government shutdown. The term is often applied when nations are under control of dictatorships, military-run countries, petrostates, and other illiberal systems. The term is applied less commonly to nations in Europe and much less so to the United States. However, using sports to improve the nation’s reputation is central to the United States’ presence on the international stage, and Donald Trump has taken sportswashing to a much more egregious extent in his second term.
Sportswashing is not a new term, by any means. The “Rumble in the Jungle” and “Thrilla in Manila,” both famous boxing matches, were held under dictatorial regimes in the Philippines and Zaire. The 1934 World Cup and 1936 Summer Olympics, both held in Italy and Germany, which were both then fascist states, were conducted in no small part to sanitize the reputation of those nations. The 2018 World Cup in Russia was marred by the nation’s war against Ukraine and treatment of its own citizens, and the 2022 World Cup in Qatar was maligned due to squalid treatment of foreign laborers.
Hosting an event, however, is not the only way nations or leaders conduct sportswashing. Foreign nations have invested in American teams in order to better their reputation. The Rwanda Development Board, an official government agency of Rwanda, signed a 2025 sponsorship deal with the Los Angeles Clippers and Los Angeles Rams. This occurred despite a regime that suppresses critical voices and free speech. Abu Dhabi’s tourism board is a jersey sponsor for the New York Knicks. Emirates, a national airline for the United Arab Emirates, paid to sponsor the NBA in-season tournament, and its logo will appear on all referee jerseys. While corporations promote sports teams all the time and signing sponsorship deals is a reasonable thing to do, these are not mom-and-pop operations but organizations built on the backs of natural resource extraction, deep government pockets, and labor practices illegal in America.
However, one of the biggest proliferators of sportswashing in recent memory has to be Donald Trump and the United States under his second administration. The “sports fan-in-chief” has used athletics as a way to push his policy, appear relatable to voters, and sanitize and salvage his often-poor international reputation. Although an argument can be made that the United States has engaged in sportswashing for a long time, with the proliferation of golf during the Cold War being a notable example, the extent of it has been turned on high in the months since Trump retook office, especially by the President himself.
Trump attended the Super Bowl earlier this year, and he has pushed against the NFL’s selection of Bad Bunny as the halftime performer in 2026. He was driven around the track of the Daytona 500. He was present at a UFC match—and has expressed desire to hold one on the White House lawn—the U.S. Open tennis final, the Army-Navy football match, and a New York Yankees game. He has also gone to a number of college football games, especially in the Southern United States, where his popularity and approval remain high. Donald Trump has made appearances at a wide variety of matches to appeal to the general public. In 2019, Trump attended the Louisiana State Tigers vs. Alabama Crimson Tide game. His presence there appeared not to be out of a desire to see two great teams duke it out in a match that has been called by some a “Game of the Century,” but rather to seem interested in the same things as his supporters. Rather, an observer might conclude that Trump attended this game to seem like an everyman, to be surrounded in cheers for him and for the teams, and to appear like someone who attended LSU or Alabama rather than his actual Ivy League business school education at the University of Pennsylvania. College football is a favored sport of Trump, likely in response to perceived “wokeness” in the NBA, NFL, or other leagues, and the fact that college football tends to have more conservative fans. The shift of young men towards Trump could have been made possible, at least in part, by his vociferous fandom of college athletics.
Outside of collegiate athletics, Trump has noted his distaste for the current names of the NFL franchise in Washington, D.C., and the MLB franchise in Cleveland and urged them to return to former names widely criticized by Native American communities. In the case of the former, he has claimed that he is the reason for the new Commanders stadium deal, which he wishes to be named after himself. He places himself against a soft, or “sissy,” atmosphere in ports. As such, he has criticized the NFL for rule changes ostensibly promoting player safety. He has also lambasted a national women’s soccer team led by a player highly critical of Trump, deeming the team “WOKE” following an early exit from the Women’s World Cup.
Trump has also used sports as a way to push his own policy in his second term. By executive order, he brought back the Presidential Fitness Test. His re-christened Department of War has made physical appearance, in addition to regular workouts, a focus of warfighting. He has also used his executive authority and bully pulpit to weigh in on the NIL debate, a hot-button issue over collegiate athletes' right to make money off their own name, image, or likeness. His administration has pushed back against transgender students in athletics as well, tying funding to not allowing transgender athletes to compete, all under the guise of “protecting women’s sports.” The president is also a noted fan of the new Saudi-backed LIV Golf League, which ties in with his geopolitical entanglement with the absolute monarchy.
While Trump has certainly made his reputation as a sports fan known to Americans, he also has much of his term left to showcase the United States, or more specifically, his United States, to the world. Indeed, it may be a reasonable conjecture that Trump is not a sports fan at all but simply views sports as a vehicle for his popularity and political needs. President Trump attended the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup Final in New Jersey earlier this year. He was audibly booed when he entered the stadium. He was again booed when he took the field to take part in the trophy presentation alongside the champions, Chelsea F.C. of the English Premier League. However, he technically did not present the trophy. The original gold-covered trophy sat in the Oval Office, while Trump gave a replica to Chelsea—showing that Trump sees himself as the focus of these sporting events, and not necessarily the teams competing.
Much of the worry around Trump’s sportswashing will come to fruition during the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics, where Trump will likely push for a strong American showing to prove that he has, in his words, “Kept America Great.” He has already engaged in discussions about moving World Cup matches away from Democratic-controlled cities like Boston (never mind that the stadium is, at minimum, a half-hour from the city by car, being located in suburban Foxborough, which is arguably closer to Providence, Rhode Island). His push against immigrants will no doubt prove a concern to many fans who wish to visit the United States for either sporting event, as these fans may fear deportation or confrontation with ICE.
Donald Trump has strived to connect himself with the sports world during his time in power. He is not simply giving an appearance of being a sports fan to engage with voters. He is not just using international sporting events hosted in the United States as a way to showcase his power. He is not only using sports as a way to villainize transgender people and other political enemies. He is doing all of the above, and then some. While the end remains to be seen, Trump will likely do more and more to integrate himself into the sports world, fusing his own policy, his fandom, and his power together. Do not fall for the rinsing of Trump’s reputation through sports—see these events for what they are, which are tools that he strives to use for himself and him alone.