Trump Wants To Make Offensive Sports Team Names Great Again
In a Sunday morning post on Truth Social, the president wrote, 'The Washington 'Whatever's' should IMMEDIATELY change their name back to the Washington Redskins Football Team. There is a big clamoring for this. Likewise, the Cleveland Indians, one of the six original baseball teams, with a storied past.'
Both football's Washington Commanders and baseball's Cleveland Guardians walked away from their controversial old names in the wake of the 2020 racial reckoning sparked by the murder of George Floyd.
The moves were a culmination of yearslong campaigns by Native American groups and advocates who argued team names evoked harmful stereotypes of Indigenous savagery along with logos that were often offensive caricatures.
But in his post, Trump claimed that public sentiment had since shifted and even Native communities were asking for the teams to reverse course.
'Our great Indian people, in massive numbers, want this to happen,' his post went on, saying, 'Their heritage and prestige is systematically being taken away from them.'
'Times are different now than they were three or four years ago,' Trump continued. 'We are a Country of passion and common sense. OWNERS, GET IT DONE!!!'
The president made similar comments earlier this month when asked about the Commanders' old identity.
'I wouldn't have changed the name. It just doesn't have the same, it doesn't have the same ring to me,' he told a reporter.
Washington D.C.'s football team dropped the Redskins name in July 2020 and rechristened itself as the Commanders in February 2022.
But when members of congress approved a bill paving the way for Washington to build a new stadium last November, it reportedly came with a condition they bring back its former mascot, which was based off the image of real-life Piegan Blackfeet Chief John Two Guns White Calf.
While there have been some discussions about reviving the logo, the Commanders' front office has said there was no chance the team would be reviving its racist old name.
In 2023, the club's then-president, Jason Wright, told Washington radio station 106.7 The Fan: 'Going back to the old name is not being considered. Period.'
One year later, Commanders owner Josh Harris said that reviving the old team name was a nonstarter for 'obvious reasons.'
Cleveland's baseball team ditched its controversial logo, a smiling crimson-faced man named 'Chief Wahoo,' in 2018, but it took another two years to walk away from The Indians moniker. The organization rechristened itself as The Guardians a year later.
Related...
Trump Admits He Misses Sports Team's Old, Racist Name
Cleveland's Baseball Team Finally Has A New Name After Dropping Racist Logo
Washington's NFL Team Is Finally Changing Its Racist 'Redskins' Name
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17 minutes ago
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Trump Threatens Washington Commanders' RFK Stadium Deal Over Team Name
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He spoke with me on the condition of anonymity, because his job doesn't know about his nationalist side hustle. Evan Worman, one of the moderators of a Buy Canadian subreddit, tells me that Canadians redirecting their purchasing power is a loss for the US because it's opening people's eyes to the quality of non-American stuff. "People are going to find a lot of the products that are getting imported from Europe have better safety standards, have higher quality control than the US, and it doesn't come with all the hang-ups and baggage of buying from somebody who wants to invade you," he says. Worman is originally from Alaska and has lived in Canada for a decade. When people don't realize he's not Canadian, he doesn't correct them. "People are genuinely very angry at us right now," he says. The attacks are also fostering a willingness to reshape the domestic Canadian economy: Local governments are getting rid of internal trade barriers that have prevented goods from flowing between provinces. "We've had, for decades, stupid, unnecessary rules between Canadian provinces," says Dan Kelly, the president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. "There has been a resurgence of that among our members that are now saying, 'Well, wait a minute, if the US market is uncertain, then I'll send my goods to Ontario rather than to New York.'" The federal government says knocking down interprovincial trade restrictions could boost Canada's economy by $200 billion annually. Karaguesian believes that may be an overstatement, but that and the domestic focus are emblematic of a bigger shift. "The people that are running the United States are saying we don't really have any allies right now — we have adversaries, and we have countries we can tell what to do," making the emphasis on a more unified Canadian economy all the more important, he says. Also on the shorter-term front, many Canadian businesses that hadn't yet bothered to get compliant with the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement because previous tariff levels were so negligible are getting their ducks in a row. Holmes, from the Chamber of Commerce, says that pre-Trump, only about half of the products crossing the border were USMCA compliant, because companies hadn't bothered to do the paperwork, but over the past four months, that's gotten to about two-thirds. He estimates that 90% of Canadian products should be compliant overall but notes that "it's just the work of getting it done." 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And there's other people who say that the United States is not a reliable trading partner anymore, and that Canada should strengthen its relationships with other countries. But developing those other relationships is not easy," says Morrow, from the University of Toronto. Canada has a strong skepticism of the US even during the best of times. Canada may be at its breaking point. Canadian political leaders and nationals feel like the US will never be satisfied, no matter how much ground they give. They find the 51st state jokes really offensive. And as much as the US-Canada relationship is extra strained right now, Canadians have long been skeptical of their larger neighbors. The US-Canada free trade agreement that predated NAFTA in the late 1980s was unpopular in Canada. Post-9/11, Canada resisted pressure from the US to join the Iraq invasion and chafed at President George W. Bush's "you're with us or against us" mentality. Some Canadian policymakers felt slighted by the Obama administration's attempts at pushing "Buy American" provisions and by the US-focused investments in the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act. The US and Canada have long grumbled over dairy and lumber. "Canada has a strong skepticism of the US even during the best of times," Morrow says, citing a quote from former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (Justin's father), who said living next to the US was like "sleeping with an elephant — no matter how friendly or even-tempered is the beast, if one can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt." "The United States, for its entire history, has been a protectionist country except the time from the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 to the 9/11 attacks," Karaguesian says. "The United States was the biggest defender of free trade at the turn of the century because they were winning at that game." Trump says the US has "all the cards" in trade relations with Canada. The US certainly has more cards, but Canada isn't playing with an empty hand. The country has felt emboldened to strengthen trade relations with other partners, to revive its own manufacturing base, and to separate itself economically, culturally, and otherwise from the US. Kelly, from CFIB, compares Canada's retaliatory tariffs to economic chemotherapy — "you take the poison in order to try to fight the larger battle" — and adds that it says something that the country is so willing to dig in. "There is fairly significant resolve among Canadian businesses to press back," he says. To be sure, Trump's trade war is doing real damage to Canada — and, it should be said, to the US. Continuing the tit-for-tat won't mean mutually assured destruction for the neighboring countries, but it is one that will harm both, even if to different degrees. Canada's 40 million population can't replace the US's 340 million in terms of a consumer market. It will continue to depend on the US and, increasingly, others for commerce and trade. And the idea of a complete decoupling is quite unfathomable, unless Americans want to spend a ton more on energy and the entire North American auto sector is overhauled. At the moment, Canadians are fired up and holding their own. They don't appear to be poised to back down anytime soon — or to forget what's happening now. "Our elites need to wake up to the full nightmare of what Donald Trump's administration means in terms of trade," Karaguesian says. Much of the Canadian population already has — and years down the line, it could very well be to their country's benefit.
