The NPR Politics Podcast - Donald Trump Is Sports-Fan-In-Chief

Episode Date: December 15, 2025

President Trump has built a brand as the sports-fan-in-chief, attending roughly a dozen major sporting events so far this year. We discuss how professional men’s sports align with Trump’s political brand.This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's Tamara Keith. And before we start the show today, I just want to take a moment to talk about the vital role of public media. Public media was founded to provide news and information to everyone for free to tell the stories of all our communities across the country. But as of this fall, federal funding for public media, including NPR and local NPR stations, has been eliminated. Despite that, we remain committed to this work. This year, the NPR Politics podcast has covered all the big news coming out of Washington, like the economy, immigration, health care. And just as important, we connect those policies to what's happening in towns and cities across the country,

from the factory floor to the grocery aisle. You can help us keep this going in 2026. Thank you if you've already gone the extra mile as an NPR Plus supporter. If not, you can join the Plus community, get a bunch of perks like Bucon, bonus episodes and more from across NPR's podcasts and support public media by signing up for NPR Plus today. Just go to plus.npr.org. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House as well. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political

editor and correspondent. And we are recording this. at 109 p.m. on Monday, December 15th, 2025. And today on the show, we are taking a step back to talk about President Trump as the sports fan in chief. We'll look at the president's relationship with professional men's sports and how it has become part of his political brand. So Franco, we know that President Trump is a politician who likes to be out in the public. He likes rallies. He likes giving speeches. Though something remarkable about this first year of his return to office is that he has actually spent more time going to professional athletic events than he has held rallies or done other events out in the country selling his policies to the American people. What does going

to a sporting event do for the president? Yeah, I mean, I think it offers a few things on a very basic level. I mean, as you noted, he's a big sports fan. He likes being part of the big games. And he also likes seeing himself on the big stage. I mean, you saw that when he inserted himself in the celebration of the FIFA Club World Cup instead of stepping aside to allow the Chelsea players to kind of soak up the spotlight, lift the trophy with their teammates. He remained amongst the team members as the trophy was lifted. You know, it's also a chance for Trump to kind of relate to Americans to voters on a different level, to reach them in a way that he may not be able to otherwise. You know, sports are supposed to kind of cut across politics, though that hasn't

always been the case for Trump. And I guess to that point, you know, some of Trump's closest allies are in the sports, you know, the ultimate fighting championship, Dana White, and he actually introduced Trump at the Republican National Convention. You have Linda McMahon. She was the CEO, the World Wrestling Entertainment. She was actually in the first Trump administration as head of the Small Business Administration. And now was back in the cabinet as Secretary of Department of Education. And, you know, to be frank, I mean, those fans, especially of the WWE and UFC, I mean, those fans were actually also a key part of Trump's campaign as he sought to return to the White House. I mean, he was really trying to appeal to a key voting block. And that's young men who were fans of the UFC and

It's not surprising that Trump would be a big fan of wrestling because it's got this manliness piece of it. UFC as well, obviously. If you go to any of his events, they feel like a WWE event, you know, where he's whooping up the crowd. The crowd is then getting on the media. It really feels like something that they, as the crowd, you know, will look at it as like they have this great feeling, this big dopamine rush that a lot of sports fans get when they go to their games. And it's the same thing. I think in a lot of ways with Trump, I would not consider WWE a sport because it's scripted and it's not, it's more entertainment than it is actual competition. They already know what the result will be. It is physically demanding. Absolutely. But I think that there's also something to the fact that it is scripted and Trump likes a show, right? He likes to be able to put on a big show if anybody's seen any of his R&C speeches, the big light behind him and the silhouette from the first R&C in 2016. it felt like an event.

Franco, I mentioned the president has been to a lot of sporting events this year. I mean, everything from the Daytona 500 to the Super Bowl, which you actually were out on the field for the Super Bowl because you were with the pool of reporters traveling with the president. Yeah, I mean, just for a second going, I mean, Dominico is absolutely right. I was also at a lot of campaign rallies where it absolutely felt like a sporting event as well. I mean, the Super Bowl was definitely emblematic of how Trump's reception is at so many of these events. I really feel like it's kind of a mixed bag. At the Super Bowl, it was a mix of cheers as he kind of appeared on the Jumbotron. We were all on the field as it happened.

And you see that in many other sporting events that he's been at, the Yankees baseball game, which was on September 11th against the Detroit Tigers. That was a mix of cheers and cheers. You know, on the same time, I will say that, you know, Trump was widely supported last week at the Army-Navy football game. And he got a similar kind of response during the campaign when Alabama played the University of Georgia in Alabama. Recently, we had the FIFA World Cup draw here in Washington, D.C. Trump was there, and he got kind of some tepid feedback from the crowd when he received this controversial peace prize by FIFA. That was kind of seen as the FIFA chief trying to curry favor with Trump. You know, and Trump was at Washington Commanders Detroit Lions game on November 9th, which was Veterans Day weekend.

And he even went into the broadcast booth. Let's take a listen to some of his color commentary. Yeah, the play-by-play. I think there's a very important couple of plays. Here we go. Second and seven. Right, second and seven. Let's see what happens.

Well. But look, I mean, presidents often do. get involved with sports. They want to get involved with cultural events because they want people to feel like, hey, I'm just like you. I watch the things that you do. I'm doing the things that you like. And look, I'm here with you. I mean, we saw then President Obama fill out his March madness brackets on ESPN for both the men's and women's tournaments. He was even on the campaign trail with the University of North Carolina basketball team where you would see him kind of taking part in practice, them taking it easy on him, you know, but he was somebody who liked sports as well.

was in the middle of it, but nothing quite to the extent of how Trump goes about this. You know, one thing that's fascinating about Trump is I think that we can safely say that he is a sports fan. But I don't know that I could tell you that he's a fan of any particular team. This is a thing that's really shocking to me, to be honest. Like, I was thinking about this. Like, who is he a fan of? I know Jared Kushner is a Mets fan. I've seen him in Ivanka Trump at Mets games.

They'll pan to them. They see them with their Mets hats. on. It's very clear. Trump is also from Queens, but I don't know, is he a Mets fan? Is he a Yankees fan? What we know he's a fan of is MAGA, because he always has that red hat on. Well, he's not a fan of teams, but he is a fan of players and owners who he gets along with, just take Tom Brady or Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots. And you can say the same thing for any number of professional golfers who he is a fan of. I agree. It's very fascinating that he is not like a specific plan, though he, you know, he'll, you know, he'll

talk about who's doing well at once, but there's no one who he's going to go down with. I guess that kind of goes to his MO. He's always, he's always with the winner. So whoever's the winner he's with. I mean, that is an allegory for his politics. He's all about winners and losers, tough guys and weak people. He doesn't want any part of the week, doesn't want any part of the losers. And he doesn't want really part of people who don't like him. And that kind of goes along with everything else. He's all smiles, wants to show up at the event as long as he's catered to. Yeah, I interviewed someone named Clay Travis. He is the founder of a conservative sports site called Outkick.

He has interviewed the president several times about sports, including traveling with him to the NCAA men's wrestling final. He said that on the plane, the president had two TVs in his office. One was on Fox News and one was on a UFC fight. He says that, you know, like President Trump comes by this honestly. He's a huge sports fan. this isn't fake. I think a lot of politicians pretend to be sports fans because they're trying to connect with the regular guy or regular gal out there who is a sports fan and it makes them seem like a normal person. I think this is Trump. This is also part of the presidency. You know,

when you're the president of the United States, you have access to anything you want, right? And if you want to go to an LPGA event, Women's Golf, and introduce the. announcers or speakers, you probably could do that too. And Trump certainly takes advantage of it because it's stuff that he does like, but he's using that power of the presidency to be able to get that access and to be able to show people and say like, oh, I'm just like you. I'm a regular guy. Well, and Franco, I was talking to a senior White House official about this who said that the videos they post of him at sporting events, those go super viral. It is a way of them reaching audiences. Oh, absolutely. I mean, this is a way to get to people that you wouldn't otherwise. And Trump just soaks all of this up at the Yankees game. It was Yankees versus Detroit Tigers on September 11th. Trump actually was rubbing shoulders with Aaron Judge and other ballplayers. I mean, he was making the most of this. He also made sure that all the photographers were there to capture those pictures.

All right. We're going to take a quick break. And we're going to have more on how the relationship between Trump and sports has changed between his first term and his second. more in a moment. And we're back. And we've been talking about President Trump's role as the sports fan in chief and also the unique way that the president is using professional men's sports to boost his political brand. Domenico, President Trump, comes at this from a pretty unique perspective as someone who has long linked his fame to sports. I'm talking about being ringside key boxing matches, welcoming the UFC to his casinos when the UFC wasn't really welcomed anywhere else. And he also owned a football team in the USFL in the 1980s that was a rival football league to the NFL. Billionaires love owning sports teams.

We do know this. They just do. It gives them a certain kind of cachet. There are a good investment. The teams generally wind up doing. doing pretty well for themselves, you know, and just as an example here of just how much culturally they can be important, you know, someone like as a Mets fan, and I can say I'm a fan, obviously, Trump doesn't say he's a fan, but I am.

And Steve Cohen is the owner of the Mets. He is the wealthiest owner in all of baseball. Wow. He is who the show Billions was based on, okay? That main character, he owned a hedge fund. Everyone on Wall Street knew who he was, but nobody outside of that really knew who he was. as the Mets owner now, he's gotten way more entree into New York culture. He's courtside at Knicks games.

People just know who he is more, aside from also being the person who paid the largest contract in sports history to Juan Soto last year. But the point is Trump was never able to get into that click, right? And it's a very Queens versus Manhattan thing where people from Queens feel like they have this chip on their shoulder and the city just doesn't accept them. And it happened in Trump's real estate game. For years and years and years, his father was somebody who had all of these buildings in Queens but couldn't break into the city. And he finally did Trump, but always kind of had this chip on his shoulder like he wasn't really accepted. And part of that ability to be accepted more widely does come down to sports for Trump. And let's just say that there is a difference between first term Trump and second term Trump in terms of how he has been received by athletes.

and the sports leagues, and also how he has treated them and talked about them. And most notably, this is about the NFL, where in 2017 at a rally in Alabama, he criticized Colin Kaepernick for taking a knee as a protest for racial justice. And Trump really dove into the culture wars on that. Yeah. And Trump was certainly somebody who had a lot of feelings and opinions, I think that it's a little different this time around because we don't have a hot controversy in the NFL. I think the NFL wanted to kind of back away from irritating Trump. So I would expect if there was another controversy, he would weigh in however he felt like weighing in, you know, and would certainly be critical if he felt like it was something that was coming from the left. And he did.

I mean, he was very critical of NFL picking Bad Bunny as, you know, the singer for the Super Bowl halftime show. I mean, I think I think you're absolutely right that he is not. going to shy away from kind of leaning into any type of controversy, especially when it has to do with the NFL. I do agree also that many of the teams and the owners just don't want to have the same kind of battle that they did in the first administration. And I think that's kind of reflective across not only the sports world, but also the business world and especially the tech world, that just a lot of professional industries have kind of shied away from taking Trump on because they just don't want to face his wrath.

And the bad bunny thing, I think, is an example that... I actually think that the president didn't go full nuclear on the bad bunny thing. Maybe he will once he watches the Super Bowl. But, like, if you think about it's a longstanding tradition that athletic teams that win a Super Bowl, win a World Series, they come to the White House, they give the president a jersey with his number, you know, with his name on the back. And it's sort of like a formality. That's the one thing that presidents definitely always do related to sports.

But in his first term, the Philadelphia Eagles, a bunch of Eagles players were like, I don't want to go talk to him. I don't want to go to that White House. And Trump actually at the last minute canceled the event honoring the Eagles and said, oh, nope, this is just going to be an event about patriotism. Eagles are not welcome anymore. And that was right in the middle of the Colin Kaepernick thing. And, you know, you had a lot of players split along racial lines in many cases who were very upset that Trump was weighing in on that. and felt very strongly. And I think that's why we had what we did. And I think that, like Franco said, the temperature has been taken down a bit, but also because there hasn't been that kind of hot controversy. And it wasn't just the Eagles. There are several teams in men's sports as well as women's sports who kind of pulled back. I'm going to be very curious what happens this year, depending on the team and kind of the climate of that culture of, you know, the city that they're from. Now I will note we've described this as the president involving himself with men's sports. He hasn't had as much. interest, I would say, in women's sports.

Well, and that's a whole other can of worms, I think, because, you know, I think there's a lot of men who are not big fans of women's sports generally. And you don't see the same ratings for a lot of women's sports teams. I also think that there's a lot of women in these sports leagues who have spoken out more vocally against Trump, the U.S. women's soccer team, certainly. The WNBA, I don't think Trump is going to be welcome at any of those events anytime soon. So I think there's a lot of factors going on there. But I also think it just has to do with this sort of old school macho attitude where these guys are the tough guys. They're putting people on the ground. They are able to jump higher. They're able to do more stuff. You know, and in the case of the UFC, making people bloodied in very different kinds of way. So I think it really has to do with this machismo tough guy, tough versus weak thing. I do agree. I mean, I think the only time that Trump is really talking about women's sports. when he's, you know, campaigning against the transgender issue and arguing that he's supporting women's sports, you know, and trying to protect them from transgender athletes.

So there is a remarkable thing that's going to happen in the next three years. Just the sheer number of sporting events that President Trump is going to be able to preside over. So first you have the UFC on the South Lawn of the White House to celebrate the 250th anniversary of America. They're going to build an octagon on the South Lawn. You have the FIFA World Cup that will be all over North America that's happening in 2026. In 27, you have the NFL draft on the National Mall, which is quite a thing. And then you have the Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028. All of this overlapping with the presidency.

They say that the most valuable resource is the president's time. So Domenico, the president is spending a lot of time physically going to sporting events, not just watching them on TV, making himself sort of a central character. Why do you think he's doing this? Well, he has time, number one. He doesn't have to run for re-election. So, you know, when we talk about the president's time being the most valuable commodity, usually we're talking about campaign staffers telling us that, you know, you can change a point here or there. Well, he's not going to be campaign. Now, he might be campaigning for Republican candidates in 2026. Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, says he's going to be out there more than he knows. But that remains

to be seen because he's very unpopular right now. But I think he just likes doing it. I think he wants to be at the center of culture. He's thinking about his legacy. And I also think that there's something that we see happen internationally as well called sports washing, where countries like Saudi Arabia or Qatar that have questionable human rights records, you know, and maybe in the middle of controversies, you know, will go and host big events. Qatar, for example, getting the FIFA World Cup, being able to do that to show them. as modern, as not as scary as you think they are. I think you can apply that to some of what Trump is doing, where he has such strong disapproval of him by half the country. And, you know,

if he's out there at these events, everyone is watching, he can try to round the edges, sand them down and say, I'm not as bad as these liberals think I am. All right. That's it for today. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Frank Gordaños. I also cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and Corresponding. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.