Paul Sullivan: Distasteful White House videos another embarrassment for Commissioners Rob Manfred and Roger Goodell
Published in Football
CHICAGO — It’s pointless these days to debate out the daily idiocy emanating from the White House, where the president is busy dropping bombs and trying to fix college sports.
But since the current administration is so obsessed with sports imagery, the latest Trumpian sports controversy needs to be addressed. (That’s a trigger warning, in case you missed it.)
In its latest effort at being “hip” with the bro crowd on X, the official White House social media account on Friday tweeted two videos interspersing MLB and NFL highlights with bombs being dropped on targets, presumably referring to the current war in the Middle East.
The MLB tweet, titled “Pure American dominance,” includes home run swings from the likes of Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds and Ken Griffey Jr. The crack of the bat is equated to a bomb exploding, though one leads to a home run and the other to death and destruction. It’s unclear whether the creator understood that Sosa is Dominican, or that Sosa, McGwire and Bonds were all alleged PED-users. But I digress …
The NFL tweet, titled “Touchdown,” has a similar motif. But instead of power hitters, it features crunching hits from players such as linebacker Ray Lewis, interspersed with similar clips of bombs being dropped, as AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” plays in the background.
Different sport, same idea: Killing and sports are both fun!
It’s the kind of ignorant and distasteful social media post we’ve come to expect from President Donald Trump’s account. He recently was forced to remove a racist post that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, and never apologized.
The latest sports/bombing videos were similar to one that featured clips of movies and TV shows interspersed with actual war video. Actor-director Ben Stiller objected to the use of his film “Tropic Thunder” in the video and responded to the White House post by asking them to remove the clip.
“We gave you no permission and have no interest in being part of your propaganda machine,” Stiller tweeted. “War is not a movie.”
Stiller’s plea was ignored, as expected, just like many musicians’ objections to the administration using their songs on social media to promote Trump or MAGA. When there is no actual name on the social media account, there’s no accountability, so it’s impossible to assess blame to any one individual other than Trump, the troll-in-chief.
It’s apparent to anyone with an ounce of empathy that the MLB and NFL videos from the White House account trivialize war and were incredibly disrespectful to the families of the six soldiers who died in Trump’s war. And it’s also clear they were created by a juvenile adult with the intellect of a 12-year-old, which could be anyone in the White House communications department run by Steven Cheung, a first-rate moron.
As of Saturday, neither MLB nor the NFL had responded to the use of their highlights to promote the war, even though anyone who has ever watched a baseball game knows by heart the phrase: “Any rebroadcast, retransmission or account of this game, without the express written consent of Major League Baseball, is prohibited.”
It would be easy for MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to condemn the use of their game highlights in such a despicable manner and force X to remove them for copyright violations. I once posted a Facebook video from a Golden State Warriors shootaround in which a Jimi Hendrix song played in the background at Chase Arena. It took about a half-hour for the post to be removed for alleged copyright violations.
Of course, asking for the tweets to be removed would mean upsetting Trump, and that’s a nonstarter. Manfred and Goodell are both big men in positions of power who repeatedly kowtow to Trump, making them the living definition of empty suits.
The players themselves also could object. But that seems unlikely as well.
The MLB video includes a brief clip of Sosa carrying a small American flag around the bases, which he famously did in the Chicago Cubs’ first home game after baseball was put on pause following the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. Sosa loves that video of him waving the American flag, and it was a patriotic gesture when it was truly needed. But the flag-waving takes on a different meaning in his tweet, making Sosa part of the propaganda machine.
Maybe he doesn’t care. Should the Cubs? Chairman Tom Ricketts, who was eulogizing Rev. Jesse Jackson on Friday at Jackson’s homegoing when the tweet was posted, also could protest the use of the Cubs highlight in the video.
Álex Rodriguez, coincidentally, was at the White House on Thursday with Trump during a celebration of the MLS champions, Inter Miami. According to Trump, the two are good pals, so don’t look for A-Rod to rock the boat.
Amazingly, while Trump uses MLB to promote his war on social media, he continues to dump on the sport. During the Inter Miami ceremony, Trump bragged of his relationship with late New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, another bullying egomaniac who frequently invited Trump into his luxury box at home games.
“It would be a World Series when baseball was hot,” Trump said. “It’s not as hot now, I’ll be honest with you. They do things wrong. But when baseball was hot as a pistol, I’d sit (with him) and I’d watch the Yankees.”
Surely he’ll soon appoint a committee of sycophants to “Make Baseball Hot Again,” just as he’s trying to “save” college sports. Roger Clemens, another alleged steroid user and Trump pal, is likely available. After that, maybe he can get A-Rod into the Hall of Fame.
Every day is a new opportunity for Trump to insinuate himself into the sports world. We’re all just prisoners of this pure American ignorance.
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