Dem
47
GOP
53
As we have written many, many times, Donald Trump has made a point of harnessing sports as a political tool and weapon. All presidents since William Howard Taft (if not earlier) have done this, but Trump, as he has with so many things, has taken this to extremes. And now, in a reprehensible but also predictable turn of events, he's using sports to help in prosecuting the Iran War.
To start with, someone in the White House (maybe several someones) had the brilliant idea to create propaganda videos equating the Iran War to an exciting sporting event. We've already seen at least a few of these videos; there's one involving bowling, and another one involving e-sports, and surely others we haven't come across yet. But one that really turns the stomach was posted to the White House's official eX-Twitter account earlier this week. We don't embed content from that platform very often anymore, for obvious reasons, but readers really should see it for themselves, so:
Touchdown pic.twitter.com/aDNdqBdRzG
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 6, 2026
For those who cannot bring themselves to watch, it is clips of bombs falling on Iran interspersed with violent hits from football games (most of the hits are illegal, by the way). And, of course, the text that accompanies the video is "Touchdown."
If these videos capture how Trump, Pete Hegseth, J.D. Vance, et al. actually conceive of this war, that is very, very concerning. War is not fun, it is not exciting, and it's not a contest in which the two sides root for their team to score the first touchdown, or home run, or goal. And the less impressed the White House is with the true gravity of the situation, the less likely it is to pull back, or pull out. After all, who punts when they have first down on the opponent's 20 yard line?
From a political standpoint, we also think this approach is absolutely disastrous. To start with, the players shown were not consulted in any way, and certainly did not give their consent to being used to sell the Iran War. Many of them are now speaking out. And we will point out that, for obvious reasons, Black Americans tend to be very sensitive about situations where their labor is used without their consent.
More broadly, we are not experts in what it takes to sell a war in the year 2026. In fact, nobody is, because nobody has, as yet, done it successfully. But we do know a thing or two about how previous wars were sold. As as we have already written a couple of times, a presidential administration has to do a LOT of the selling before the war ever starts. We speak often of "political capital" and so you might call this something like "war capital." Wars always get less popular over time, because of all the killing and dying and such, and so it's politically essential to have a supply of goodwill built up, going in. The Trump administration did virtually nothing to build up "war capital" for the Venezuela invasion, and did even less to build up "war capital" for Iran.
Something else we know about is the propaganda that was used to keep Americans on board during World War II (which was, it should be noted, a fairly popular war overall). Broadly speaking, the propaganda that was directed at American civilians during World War II had one of three messages: (1) The enemy is unspeakably evil; (2) The enemy is someone to be laughed at and ridiculed; and (3) Here's how you, Joe and Joanne Civilian, can help the war effort. Here are well-known examples of each style:
(Z) has probably seen 1,000 World War II propaganda posters, and cannot recall any that presumed to draw a parallel between the war and, say, a baseball game or a football game. That is not a surprise because such a comparison would have been seen as distasteful, and unworthy of the seriousness of the threat the U.S. was facing. We suspect that the parallel will go over just as poorly now, excepting those folks who, like Pete Hegseth, have had an erection since the day Ali Khamenei was killed.
And remarkably, that's not the only "distasteful use of sports in the context of the Iran War" news from this week. The World Cup will soon be upon us, and Iran is scheduled to send a team. Yesterday morning, Trump got on his big-words-small-hands social media platform to share his views on the matter:
The Iran National Soccer Team is welcome to The World Cup, but I really don't believe it is appropriate that they be there, for their own life and safety. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP
There are really only two ways to read this: (1) "Nice team you got there. Shame if anything happened to it" or (2) "We cannot guarantee the safety of the Iranian team, and will not be held responsible if something goes wrong." Either way, it is a veiled threat.
Back in January, we wrote about this same basic subject, and we suggested that, if push comes to shove, FIFA might cut the U.S. out of the loop and stage the tournament in just Mexico and Canada (who are already scheduled to be co-hosts), or maybe Mexico, Canada and Brazil (which has numerous stadiums of the appropriate size). That observation prompted this response from reader S.M. in Toronto, ON, Canada:
Saw the tail end of your item on potentially moving the U.S. allocation of World Cup games to Canada and Mexico, and, well... let's just say "no."
Or, more specifically, it is an absolutely, completely, impossible scenario.
This is, essentially, a U.S. tournament with some satellite matches being played in the partner countries. Simply put, there is zero way for the infrastructure to be put in place at this stage to host the World Cup. Canada has two host cities that have gone through the years and years of preparation to host the event—Toronto and Vancouver. Even if we assume that Canada would only get 30% of the United States' 78 relocated games, that would mean about 28 matches given to the two cities. That would stretch the two stadia to the breaking point in terms of playing surfaces, for starters. There's a reason the World Cup is customarily spread across 10 to 12 stadiums.
And, no, adding additional cities isn't viable. The preparation, especially security, for an event like this takes many months and more likely many years (that was certainly what I remember when I did some work for one of Toronto's Olympic bids). Not to mention that any host city needs a ridiculous amount of hotel capacity, training facilities (every visiting team needs their own and even here in Toronto we're having a bit of trouble accommodating even the limited number of teams that will be playing here), media facilities, trained volunteers, etc. While the Canadian national teams have played in cities such as Edmonton before, there's a vast difference between hosting a one-off international and hosting the World Cup and the crazy volumes of visitors that come with it. And the next-most-available city, Montreal, doesn't have a viable stadium at the moment.
That doesn't even consider the anger the move would cause among fans who have already purchased tickets to games (the United States' stadium capacities are much larger, so 50% or so of those fans would be told "sorry, we don't have a seat for you"), travel that would have to be altered, and the fact that I don't think either country would especially be in the mood to spend additional billions on the tournament on short notice.
We got many, many other messages like this one; we just chose the one from S.M. in Toronto because it was short and to the point.
With all due respect to S.M. in Toronto and those other readers, you are wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrongity-wrong. We direct your attention, in particular, to the 2019-20 NBA season. If, on January 1, 2020, you had told Commissioner Adam Silver, or any of the team owners, or any of the players, or any of the fans that the season would be suspended for 4 months, would eventually resume without fans in attendance, and would feature a championship tournament held in a literal bubble, also without fans, they would have looked at you like you had holes in your head. And yet, that is exactly what happened, thanks to the COVID pandemic. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
It is absolutely true that organizations like FIFA and the IOC have a long history of dealing with distasteful leaders and/or nations, and that they are more than willing to continue that tradition in 2026 (FIFA) and 2028 (IOC). However, what forced the NBA's hand in 2020 was that, absent drastic action, the integrity of the competition, and the safety of the participants, was at serious risk. And that is the kind of concern that could get FIFA and/or the IOC to sit up and take notice. If they believe that the results will be determined by something other than the play on the field, or if they feel that some/many of the athletes are at risk of arrest, or assault, or some other kind of violence, they will have no choice but to do something, just as the NBA (and later MLB and the NFL and the NHL) had no choice. For FIFA, it could be that hastily staged games in Rio, or games played in tiny stadiums, or some other such emergency measure is the least bad option available.
The point here is that Trump very much wants the World Cup, because he wants whatever glory will reflect upon him as he attends the opening/championship match, and as he brags on social media, etc. But when he tacitly threatens the Iranian team (not to mention teams that have Latino players, or brown players, or players from sh**hole countries), he is playing with fire. And it is wrong to believe that FIFA will stick with the United States no matter what, because it just isn't so. There certainly IS a breaking point, the only question is exactly where it is. (Z)