The MLS champions face a familiar conundrum: lend credence to a warmongering administration, or sit out and draw heat
D
onald Trump was not at the White House when the military he commands began bombing Iran over the weekend. He was at Mar-a-Lago, his estate in Florida, following the action from a makeshift situation room apparently built from those curtains that you can wheel away. That’s also where he was when American forces kidnapped Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife a few weeks earlier.
On Thursday, however, Trump will be at the White House for the really important business – namely, receiving Inter Miami as winners of the 2025 MLS Cup.
It’s unclear whether the Herons will be joined by Lionel Messi, per the Athletic’s reporting, but with or without him, the ceremony will take place at a fraught time, even by Trump’s standards. Only last week, the president yukked it up with most of the Olympic men’s hockey team – five out of the team’s players chose to stay away – and vaporized the goodwill that team had earned with its gold medal.
