Trump Is Kicking The Left’s Ass on Sports

The Trump administration is blanketing the sports world with appearances while the Left seems to have no presence

Today, April 15th, is Jackie Robinson Day, commemorating his integration of baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. It’s a history that Major League Baseball, and the Dodgers specifically, are rightfully proud of, and his number 42 is the only jersey number retired across the entire sport. Robinson, in addition to his historic baseball career, also served in the Army in World War II, service the Trump administration deleted from the Pentagon’s website (and then restored after an outcry). And yet, just weeks later, the Dodgers (now of Los Angeles) visited the White House to celebrate their World Series victory, a decision many baseball fans found disgraceful.

Yesterday, President Trump hosted President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, where they jointly claimed that they would not return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, in defiance of a recent Supreme Court decision. Here was the government of the United States grabbing a man off the streets and sending him to a foreign prison without any due process.

On the very same day, the Ohio State college football team visited the White House in honor of their National Championship and performed the typical pageantry and good natured celebration that is now a tradition for the winners of major sports championships. It was like a different universe, where the Trump Administration was normal and law-abiding and this was just another day in the world of sports. Fortunately, Vice President JD Vance dropped the championship trophy, a blooper which has already dominated media coverage of the Buckeyes trip.

Yet for sports fans, many of whom are young men, these types of normalizing moments are all too common. President Trump has embedded himself into the sporting world in a way that is difficult to dislodge and very powerful.

This past weekend, Trump was the star of a UFC event in Miami, receiving a standing ovation. He was joined by much of his cabinet, including Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Elon Musk and his son sat next to Trump. At the event, Trump was pumped up by Joe Rogan and Dave Portnoy (despite their recent criticism of some Trump policies) and even Shaq. In just nine days, FBI Director Kash Patel not only attended the fight with Trump, but also visited the Dodgers’ clubhouse and attended multiple games to watch Alex Ovechkin tie, and then break, the NHL goal scoring record, taking him to three cities.

Trump has made a habit of going to big sporting events in the past few months. In fact, these are some of the only public events Trump does. Trump attended the Super Bowl and Daytona 500. He went to the NCAA men’s college wrestling championship in Philadelphia. These are relatively safe spaces for Trump, he gets lots of applause and an audience with a core demographic of men. Even the Philadelphia Eagles announced that they will be attending the White House to celebrate their Super Bowl victory, after notably declining to visit the White House in 2018 during Trump’s first term.

The Left is largely letting these moments go unchallenged. They are not having large protests. They don’t convince athletes to boycott. They don’t share talking points for sympathetic sports figures. Trump has this space to himself, and that is a major mistake. We saw the same dynamic in the 2024 election. The sports world was silent (or sometimes supportive) and Trump won the space. Athletes even adopted the “Trump dance” as a victory celebration.

This has to change.

What limited data we have suggests that the fan bases of most major sports in the US are fairly split. Last year, a survey of NFL fans found that they supported Kamala Harris 45-42 over Trump. The most famous players, like Lebron James and Steph Curry, also largely supported Harris. So this is certainly not ground that the Left should just concede to Trump.

YMRP’s survey of young men found that they followed a wide variety of sports. They actually said they followed soccer more than any other sport- which is not particularly coded as left or right and could present an opportunity.

Young Men Research Initiative is launching a new series on sports and politics. We are going to highlight stories that exemplify the intersection between sports and politics, and that we think deserve more attention. Here are just examples:

• A well-known Australian MMA coach was sent to a federal prison when he tried to visit the country for an MMA seminar.

• Canadian fans boo the US National Anthem at NHL games.

• A star Duke basketball player from Sudan faces deportation before the NBA draft.

These types of stories (and there are many more) have the potential to go viral and reach exactly the audience of young men that need to see that politics and policy are impacting something they care about deeply. The Right has been doing this for a while, by elevating every story of a trans athlete competing against a woman into a national debate. The Left can do better and it needs to.