NEW YORK – The gold-tinged corridors of Manhattan’s Trump Tower was the perfect send-off for the pageantry of Gianni Infantino’s Roman Empire alongside the US President. In the last throes of World Cup absurdity, two messianic figures declared this “the greatest human, social and cultural event that mankind has witnessed”.
In the mind of Infantino the past seven weeks has carried such megalomaniacal importance that two spheres, the historical and the sporting, have blurred. For Donald Trump, the stakes are entirely political. Before November’s mid-terms, his approval rating is at -22 – a combination of the war in Iran, the delayed release of the Epstein files and confidence in his handling of the economy the lowest it has been in his political career.
But in Maga-land, the World Cup has been a vindication of Republican policy at home and abroad – from the conflict with a competing nation to the intervention over Folarin Balogun’s red card.
Roxanne Hoge, chair of the Republican Party of LA County, was in the SoFi Stadium to watch Iran play New Zealand in front of thousands of fans from the diaspora.
‘It was a Trumpian moment’
