Donald Trump’s long-time nemesis, Rosie O’Donnell, can’t believe the crap he just pulled at the World Cup.
For the blissfully unaware, Trump, who is president of one of the host nations at this year’s World Cup, personally lobbied FIFA President Gianni Infantino to rescind a red card for Folarin Balogun that would have kept America’s best player out of their round of 16 knockout match against Belgium. The red card was excessive, to be sure, but Trump’s meddling — resulting in the first time a red card ruling had been reversed since 1962 — reeked of corruption to the rest of the world, and cast a pall over the U.S. men’s national team’s tournament run. It certainly didn’t help that Infantino had gifted Trump FIFA’s inaugural Peace Prize late last year to curry favor with the strongman.
“The fact that he called up FIFA and had the penalty revoked for the American team and America was like, ‘Yeah, that’s good! I didn’t think it was a red card anyway!’ Well, you’re not the freakin’ ref! You don’t get to decide!” O’Donnell tells Variety. “Since when does he get to make and change the rules, the goalposts, whatever metaphor you want to use, and everyone just sits by and shrugs their shoulders? There’s so much [corruption] that we don’t even notice it.”
