Given how right-wingers tend to hate soccer, the only reason the Media Research Center — which has indeed freaked out over soccer in the past — supported the World Cup being held in the U.S. is presumably because President Trump supports it. Alex Christy groused in a June 10 post:
PBS welcomed hard-left professor and former Team USA U-23 player Jules Boykoff to the Tuesday edition of Amanpour and Company to preview the upcoming World Cup. Co-anchor Hari Sreenivasan wasn’t interested in who was going to win but rather in comparing the U.S. under President Trump to previous hosts Russia and Qatar with Boykoff, who claimed the U.S.-hosted tournament is actually worse than Qatar because, at least, Qatar being a small country meant its carbon emissions would be lower.
Sreenivasan began by rhetorically asking, “Each World Cup we have a conversation somewhat similar to this. We talked before the last World Cup in Qatar about the challenges, about labor violations, what Qatar had to do to get that World Cup on. Before that, it was Vladimir Putin. And, you know, what does it mean to have this on Russian soil, so to speak?”
[…]According to Boykoff, Trump being president sucks any fun out of the tournament, “I mean, President Trump has made it clear, he said it many times in public, that the World Cup and the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles are crucial to his legacy. And so, I think when you have someone like that, who is set on using sport to his political advantage in charge, and I think it must be said, I mean, he’s a highly erratic individual, he can be impulsive at times, and he loves attention. That really sets up a recipe that could create problems, you know, for this event. Normally, people turn their attention to the sport at hand once the event finally starts, and we put those problems behind us. I’m not so sure that’s going to happen this time around.”
Boykoff would go on to suggest, without evidence, that ICE will harass fans and tourists because they have “been marauding through neighborhood after neighborhood in the United States. Masked up, they’ve actually killed people who are U.S. citizens.”
Christy didn’t explain that such a possibility would be entirely logical given the way ICE has been acting.
Nicholas Spinnato complained in a June 12 post that the U.S. banning a World Cup referee from entering the country was criticized:
As the World Cup was set to begin on Thursday, Wednesday’s CNN This Morning decided to parrot the view of the joint North American-hosted event, with most games played in the U.S., as a “World Cup of chaos,” as labeled by former English soccer star Ian Wright, due to immigration customs and visa enforcement.
The segment’s start focused on a Somalian referee who was barred from entry to the US, which CNN said was caused by “uncovered derogatory information.” Yesterday, both FOX News and the Daily Wire reported the ban from entry was due to possible ties to terrorism.
Host Audie Cornish’s opening asked, “…are the off-the-field headlines threatening to overshadow the biggest tournament in the world? “
In further expansion on the Somali referee, Cornish noted the ref, Omar Artan, “received a hero’s welcome when he returned to Somalia” and added he told the New York Times that he was “just simply a referee trying to live his dream.”
Spinnato then peddled a pro-Trump narrative, as told by certain World Cup participants:
The CNN host then displayed some media headlines about treatment of World Cup guests:
Fans from Scotland said their permits were withdrawn at the final moment. Teams from Senegal, Uzbekistan were treated like criminals, according to critics, and a player from Iraq was questioned for seven hours upon arrival in Chicago.
The head coach for Team Uzbekistan has since taken to Instagram to say “these were routine, standard checks” and called the tournament’s organization “flawless.” Team Senegal has also denied that anything was wrong.
Spinnato did not explain why these people should be believed without question.
Christy returned for another post complaining that some in the media are shocked that Americans were actually being hospitable to World Cup tourists:
Over the past couple of days, social media has been filled with foreign tourists marveling over aspects of American culture and hospitality ahead of the World Cup. For CNN sports analyst Christine Brennan, this was a surprising development, especially for tourists visiting the South. On Friday’s edition of The Situation Room, Brennan told hosts Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown that “we would never have anticipated” such hospitality given the country’s reputation as being “inhospitable.” Brennan never clarified who she meant by “we.”
Blitzer began by highlighting a specific X user, who simply goes by Freddy, “The World Cup, as we all know, a major cultural eye-opener for so many fans traveling to North America to watch all of this, including here in the United States. There’s a German fan whose name is Freddy, who has gained a massive following online as he has tweeted about discovering quintessential American staples, including Bass Pro Shop, Buc-ee’s, and Waffle House. Talk to me a little bit about the importance of sports in giving people a glimpse into American culture.”
Brennan conceded, “That is so fun. That’s the flip side of the conversation we were just having, is that these tourists are still coming. The ones who can, certainly Europeans, people who love soccer way more than the United States. It’s been a part of their lives for, you know, ever where for us, as Coy was saying, it’s a newer game on the women’s and men’s side.”
[…]If Brennan is surprised that the country, but especially the South, is welcoming foreign tourists and teams, then that says more about her, the media, and propagators of anti-American stereotypes than anybody else. Perhaps this is because Brennan associates kindness with liberalism. During the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, she boasted about Team USA’s liberal values on things such as “LGBTQ rights” being proof “they’re not like their dads or their grandfather.”
Why is it a bad thing for people to boast that you do not have to be heterosexual to have rights in America? Christy didn’t explain.
Spinnato returned to grouse some more in a June 13 post:
As the World Cup opened in the U.S. in Los Angeles on Friday, MS NOW’s David Noriega warned of possible political unrest in America amid the start of global soccer tournament. He said the World Cup was a window into “the politics of a host nation and into the geopolitical moment,” which he referred to as the U.S. hosting in “a moment of great turmoil.”
Noriega’s fearmongering came after MS NOW Reports connected the expiration of the FISA warrant program, set to expire on Friday, to the start of the World Cup.
He then began his portion with an explanation of the security challenge of the World Cup, and explained possible protests that were, of course, anti-Trump.
The LAPD told Noriega they “expect protests,” which Noreiga expanded upon and stated, “The protests could come from any number of places: anti-ICE protests, anti-Trump protests.” He also mentioned possible anti-Iranian Islamic Regime protests “by Persian communities in LA against the presence of the Iran team, the team representing the current Iranian regime here in the United States.”
[…]The fear of some international reporters – even American reporters like Noriega – who wanted to frame everything as a referendum on Trump policies was astounding. They have pumped out constant disapproval and a barrage of stories about denial of entry to a Somalian referee who has alleged ties to people associated with terrorism, even as a Democratic representative said it seemed to be a valid denial.
Spinnato didn’t explain why criticism of the barring of the referee was a bad thing, especially given that no evidence has been presented to back up the purported terrorism link.