What Trump’s attendance at an N.B.A. Finals game, the surreal vulgarity of the U.F.C. Freedom 250 event, and “soccer diplomacy” at the World Cup reveal about this political moment.
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The New Yorker staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Louisa Thomas join Tyler Foggatt to discuss three recent collisions of sports and politics. Cunningham and Foggatt talk about President Donald Trump’s appearance at a Knicks game during the team’s championship run, which evoked a mixed reception from New Yorkers and complicated an otherwise celebratory week in the city. Then Fry and Foggatt discuss the U.F.C. fight that Trump hosted on the White House lawn—in celebration of America’s two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary, and his own birthday—and how it merged the aesthetics and politics of Trump’s second term. Finally, Thomas joins Foggatt to discuss the World Cup and how the Administration’s immigration policies, the Iran war, and America’s precarious standing on the international stage are impacting one of the world’s premier sports and cultural events.
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