What A Day - America Icing Out World Cup Fans

Episode Date: June 10, 2026

The World Cup is the biggest annual sporting event in the world. And the first game is tomorrow. This year’s competition is being hosted by three countries for the first time: the US, Canada, and Mexico. Already, fans of Argentina, Cote d’Ivoire, and other countries have flooded social media with their journeys to watch their favorite teams play. But with the World Cup, as with most things, comes… a lot of politics. We spoke with Bill Connelly to find out how politics is impacting the event. He’s a staff writer for ESPN covering soccer and college football.And in headlines, Trump continues to threaten Iran, inflation hits its highest in three years, and Democrats “nominate the guy with the nazi tattoo” in the Maine Democratic primary for U.S. Senate.Show Notes: Check out Bill's work – https://tinyurl.com/mvt45rea Call Congress – 202-224-3121 Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/y4y2e9jy What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast Follow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/ For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

It does feel like FIFA is really kind of trying to test the boundaries here of like how how miserable can we make everything beforehand and have still people still show up and watch and pay and have a great time. We're going to find out because the game always rules. I'm Jane Koston and this is Wadaday, the show watching Connecticut Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal make a Trump-nominated candidate for the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals extremely uncomfortable. Let me ask you, was the Capitol attack attack on January 6th. Senator, the actions on January 6th were deeply troubling to watch, but I'm not going to characterize

it beyond. It turns out even basic questions are tough when you have an orange president to please. On today's show, we get into the messy politics of the World Cup with ESPN's Bill Connolly. Before we get into all that, here's what we're following today, Wednesday, June 10th. You can serve, Mr. President, about the latest inflation number which came out this morning. Could that be a... No, I love it. The numbers were right.

You know what I really love that? I love the inflation. Add loving inflation to the list of things that President Trump and I don't have in common. Rising gas prices pushed inflation to its highest level in three years last month. The Labor Department said consumer prices rose 4.2% in May from a year. earlier. That's the third straight monthly increase. Inflation had been cooling before Trump

imposed sweeping tariffs in April of 2025. Prices have since surged after the Iran war made oil and gas more expensive. Which is bad! And speaking of war, the U.S. launched airstrikes early Wednesday against Iran and Tehran fired back at countries in the region.

While taking questions from reporters at the White House, Trump elaborated on this true social threat that said, quote, they've taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them. Now they will have to pay the price. Well, we're going to be attacking them and attacking them very hard. You're resuming on them? Yeah, well, we are. Based on the helicopter, I guess we have the right to do that.

A U.S. Army attack helicopter went down near the Strait of Hormuz earlier this week. On Tuesday, Trump said the helicopter was shot down. An official who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity said the helicopter had collided with an Iranian drone. We'll see what happens, but we hit him hard yesterday. We're going to hit them again hard today in case you miss it in case you don't turn on your television set. And we'll see what happens with the deal. We were really close to a deal, but they keep tapping us along. They keep playing us for suckers.

Amid, all his blabbing, Trump signed a bill into law today that gives his immigration and deportation agenda a nearly $70 billion boost for the rest of his time in the White House. House Republicans pushed the measure through despite the objections of Democrats. The law brings to an end a nearly six-month fight over Department of Congress. of Homeland Security funding, which began with the shooting deaths of two U.S. citizens during federal immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis earlier this year. On today's segment of Who've tweeted that, I bring you an absolute gem following Tuesday's primaries.

Quote, enjoying my first cup of coffee since getting my ass kicked last night and reading about how Dems nominated the guy with a Nazi tattoo. Any guesses? If you said South Carolina Republican Representative Nancy Mace, you'd be right, and she's not wrong. Mace came in fifth in South Carolina's Republican gubernatorial primary. Trump-backed lieutenant governor, Pamela Evett, will face state attorney general Alan Wilson in a runoff on June 23rd. And that guy with a Nazi tattoo?

That's Graham Platner. Blatner won the main Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, setting up a high-stakes race against Republican Senator Susan Collins. It's a resounding victory for Platner in the face of numerous scandals. And that's the news. Let's talk about the World Cup. The World Cup is the world's biggest sporting event, with an estimated 5 billion people watching the tournament in 2022. This year's edition will make history in two ways. It's being hosted by three countries, the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, and it will feature 48 teams expanded from the previous field of 32.

Fans of Argentina, Cote d'Ivoire, and other countries have already flooded TikTok and Instagram with their journeys to watch their favorite teams play. But also at play are a lot of politics. That's not new, of course. But what is new is how the Trump administration is influencing events on and off the field. For one, there are travel bans that have made it impossible for fans from Iran and Haiti to go to games in the U.S. There's also the expected presence of immigration and customs enforcement officers at stadiums, and FIFA's generally cozy relationship with Trump. Basically, the president is making an already weird and wild sporting event, even stranger.

So how will politics impact the World Cup this summer? To find out, I spoke to Bill Connolly. He's a staff writer for ESPN covering soccer and college football. Bill, welcome to what today. It's a pleasure to be here. The World Cup is kicking off this week, first with a game in Mexico City on Thursday, and then with a game in Los Angeles on Friday. But not everyone who is supposed to be here has been able to get into the U.S.,

thanks to the Trump administration's immigration policies. What do we know about who's getting in and who isn't? Number one, we know there's one of the top refs, a guy from Somalia, not let in, went back to a hero's welcome in Somalia, apparently. And apparently they couldn't just rearrange the schedule to where he refs in Mexico or something. So he just got sent home, and we have one fewer ref now than previous. And then as of like less than two weeks ago, the Iran team will be allowed into the country to play their games. But a lot of their staff were still waiting on visas.

And I don't think they're all that optimistic. And I think, you know, there was a rumor that they were going to have to leave by midnight on the day of the game, get back. to Mexico, but that might turn out to be false. We'll see. We might give them a little more flexibility than that. But regardless, that has definitely happened. And honestly, you know, just from the general and flexibility of the United States when it comes to opening up some of these policies, like for Russia and Qatar, there was no, Russia did not have a visa process. And with a FIFA pass, you could basically get into Qatar for the time of the tournament. And the U.S. never agreed to that. No matter, two different administrations didn't agree to that because of general whatever immigration or

terrorism concerns. But obviously it's gotten a little more stringent. They've talked about loosening things up, but that came a little too late. And so I don't think many fans from some of the affected nations even tried to come. So we don't know how many of those would have been turned down to begin with. How do you think that's going to influence just the game environment? Because one of my favorite things about watching the World Cup is seeing, you know, you see the interactions. I mean, we've been seeing in the friendlies, you see the interactions of like fans of like Australia and Mexico and fans of like Cote d'Ovoire have taken over Philly. Like that's one of my favorite things about the tournament. If you have fans from

a bunch of these countries who literally have tickets but can't enter the United States, how's that going to influence the game environment? Well, I mean, I think already the ticket prices themselves are going to influence it a good amount to begin with just because we've priced out a huge portion of the world's population with the ticket prices. And obviously some of these will come down at the end. The tickets will be unsold. Then you can snatch them upgrade at the last second. Don't anybody was coming over from, you know, Tunisia or something on the off chance that they could get a ticket at the last second. So, I mean, already, you know, the environments were going to be impacted regardless. And, and obviously now there are certain countries that probably won't have much fan support beyond, you know, people who are dual citizens or who are already here. And, you know, maybe they can make up the difference. That is, it is one of the best things. about soccer in general is just the environments that it can create. The World Cup was already a little behind in that regard because of all the travel

involved in the costs and this one's going to be behind even more. Let's just back up for a second. The World Cup is a massive deal for soccer fans, soccer players, professionals, people all over the world. Like, Didier Drugba helped pause a war when Cotevore made it to the World Cup like 20 years ago. So it's inherently political and has been. But what do you think makes the World Cup sense? specifically such a political flashpoint year after year.

Is it about the team is playing each other, about FIFA? What is it? Yeah, I mean, part of this is just the most popular. Everything we think of with football in the United States, soccer is for the rest of the world. You know, world's big place. And it's going to start up a lot of passion. It's going to get a lot of very influential people involved as is.

But for the last 50 years, FIFA, 50 plus really, FIFA's kind of mastered this little game where in the name of spreading the game, they're also buying influence and buying, you know, buying literal things, physical, tangible things. Because, you know, if you're running for fee for president, every country gets a vote. And so what's the best way to win that vote? Scoop up all the smaller countries that don't have the influence and want to have influence in this world. You know, and if you are an ambitious country, like, say, Qatar, there is an obvious path to kind of buying your way in. You know, the biggest, I think that, what is it, 2010, when the 2018 and 22 World Cups were awarded simultaneously.

SEP bladder, the FIFA president at the time just basically wanted to buy a, not a FIFA Peace Prize, a Nobel Peace Prize. And he wanted to basically set it up so that they could award 2018 to Russia and 2022 to the United States at the same time, bring the world together, make everybody a happy, harmonious place and get himself a Nobel Peace Prize. Because that bidding happened the way it did. And because they were basically working so far out into the future, everybody who was on that council who voted on the World Cup sites basically realized this is their chance for one last score. And that opened the door for somebody to usurp the United States kind of cut in line a little bit. And it ended up being awarded to Russia and Qatar at the same time, which then massive corruption charges, you know, heads rolled, so to speak. And they kind of cleared out the leadership. And Gianni Infantino came in with the lesson that basically our problem was we were corrupt in.

private as opposed to just being openly welcoming of all money of any kind out in the open. And he's taking things to a new level, it seems like. We'll get back to my conversation with Bill Connolly in a moment. No stoppage time or VAR required. If you like the show, make sure to subscribe. Leave a five-star review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Watch us on YouTube and share with your friends. More to come after some ads.

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can get $35 off of select frames with code WAD. That's A-U-R-A-Frams.com promo code Wad. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. Let's get back to my conversation with ESPN's Bill Connolly. So the World Cup always puts its host country's problems in the spotlight. Qatar, it was having migrants build all your stadiums in 300-degree weather. And here in the U.S., in 2026, that means immigration.

So as we discussed, some people aren't being allowed to enter the country, whether they're referees or fans, but also the Trump administration has confirmed that ICE will be present at the U.S. World Cup games for, quote, national security. What do we know about what ICE will be doing at those games? We're all very curious to find out. It is going to be, I mean, the details have obviously been very sparse, but part of anybody covering the World Cup for ESPN and everybody else, that's right at the top of the list of things to watch for because, yeah, they haven't really hidden any of this. And you talk about things that are going to impact the crowd, the level of the crowd, the intensity and fun in the festivities.

This is supposed to be the most fun event in the world. Obviously, FIFA tried to, you know, well, it won't be, you know, Well, you know, people can still get in and everything, but they clearly do not have any say in how this is going to go. And I think we're all very, very curious once the matches start, especially with the United States match in Los Angeles on Friday, we're going to see. We don't really know yet because they haven't said anything beyond there will be ice presence. And we're very excited to see what that means. So despite all of the politics that show up every time, the World Cup is still at its core, like the Mexican. for soccer lovers. But I was thinking about for this World Cup, where I was going into it feeling

so negative. And then you start seeing videos of people like traveling across the country and going to Buckees for the first time. Or you see Morocco fans like celebrating in the streets because their team is here. You've got fans from Norway taking over parts of New York. Do you think that this World Cup will be remembered differently because of the politics? Or do you think that the power of the sport can overcome the politics again? It does feel like FIFA is really kind of trying to test the boundaries here of like how miserable can we make everything beforehand and have still people still show up and watch and pay and have a great time.

We're going to find out because the game always rules. It just, it's unavoidable for all the talk about Qatar and all the buildup to that World Cup. We got a France-Argentina final that might have been the best final in the history of the World Cup. It was just a magnificent match. And, you know, especially with the expanded field, granted, that makes this thing last about a year and a half.

It's just going to be the most exhausting tournament ever. But then also, you get almost every star that you can think of in this sport is going to be in the United States or Canada or Mexico playing in this event. You're going to have all the star power. You're going to have all the, you know, the countries who can make it. You know, I'm covering a match in Kansas City. Get to see the Netherlands, the Orange Army of fans, very excited about it. We're going to see the social videos.

You're going to do the right-left thing? Oh, that's going to be so fun. They better. I'm going to have to, you know, if they don't, I'm going to have to get everybody back outside to line up and do it so I can see it. But for those who are not aware, the fans of the Netherlands do this line dance thing where they all yell like right and left. And it's, if you've ever watched like 10,000 people all doing something while looking like they're having the best time, it's, it rules. No, it's going to be the power of this event and the power of the sport, the fact that so much of the world is obsessed. over it and so many fan bases are just so fun to be around while this is all going on. It's going to be fun. And it's just a question of whether the off the pitch stuff, pitch, by the way, pitch, off the pitch. You know, it's how much of a distraction that really provides with the ice presence and all these other things.

It's been so conflicting trying to prepare everything that we're going to prepare for this, for covering this tournament because there are these horrible, annoying things. And also, it's going to be great. There are going to be great matches. and that's going to overpower a lot of it. Bill, thank you so much for joining me and enjoy the games. Absolutely. That was my conversation with Bill Connolly.

He writes about soccer and college football for ESPN. Before we go, America's number one late-night political, gay, live comedy podcast is hosting two very special pride episodes this month. If you're in Los Angeles on June 16th, you won't want to miss the live-it taping of these Lov It or Leave It episodes. You'll hear all the jokes they have to leave on the cutting room floor in the name of common decency. The lineup includes drag race winner Mikey Meeks,

hacks actor Mark and Delicado, stand-up superstar Atsko Okatska, and legendary joke writer Bruce Falanch. Get your tickets now. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review. Say goodbye, maybe to warrantless surveillance

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