Trump Reveals How He Bullied FIFA to Lift Red Card Ban on Team USA

President Trump openly admitted to World Cup corruption while explaining how he got FIFA to rescind Team USA star Folarin Balogun’s red card suspension—the first time the soccer organization has done so since 1962. 

Balogun was initially supposed to be suspended from playing in Monday’s Round of 16 match against Belgium after receiving a red card for a tackle against Bosnia and Herzegovina defender Tarik Muharemović last week. FIFA stated that teams are unable to appeal red cards, which keep a player out of the following game. Nevertheless, Balogun will be playing on Monday after Trump’s call with FIFA President Gianni Infantino. Belgium has challenged the decision at the time of this writing, but no update has been made. 

“Can you describe your phone call with Gianni Infantino about the red card?” a reporter asked Trump at the White House on Monday morning. 

“You’re asking me about the whole soccer thing? Yeah, I did, I spoke to Gianni, who’s highly respected, who’s produced the most successful World Cup in history by, they say, four times.… So I saw the play. And I’m a person that loves sports, was a good athlete. And I understand sports really well. Really well. And that wasn’t a foul. That wasn’t even an infraction,” Trump replied. “That was two guys running full speed that happened to crash into each other. You can’t take your foot and properly place it on somebody else’s foot—these were two great athletes that got tangled up. And this referee, who is a little bit suspect, if you check his past … he made a call that nobody could believe, even people on the other side.” 

“He didn’t do anything wrong. He’s our best player, or one of our best players … and [the referee] gave him a red card. Then I started hearing that means he can’t play in the next game.… When they take your best player … and they say you can’t play? That’s very unfair,” Trump continued. “So yes, I asked for a review by FIFA.… I’m the one that got them to [rescind the suspension]. It was not Biden. Biden was asleep.” 

“All I did, all I did, I asked for a review because I didn’t think it was a foul. And, you know, again, I’m good at this stuff. I didn’t think it was a foul.” 

Trump was later asked about the Belgian response, and if he would speak to the country’s prime minister before the game. 

“The people in Belgium—if they win the game, they can be very proud. If they win the game with a player missing, it would have been a different feeling. You can’t do that, and I’m very glad. All I did was ask for a review. I didn’t say, “You have to do this,” he said. “This man is a smart, tough man, Gianni Infantino. He’s a smart, tough man, and his stock has gone through the roof.… I fear we have to have all the best players on the field.”

The decision has been met with protest from fans, the Royal Belgian Football Association, or RBFA, and even UEFA, the governing body of European soccer. 

“When the certainty of rules is no longer guaranteed by its guardians, the integrity of the game is at stake and the credibility of a competition is undermined,” UEFA said in a statement. “Equally, such a decision creates a precedent in the ongoing tournament, where similar situations will now require an equal treatment, to the detriment of the competition.… “We express our disbelief at such an unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable decision.”

Balogun’s tackle was certainly a foul. And even if you don’t agree that it should have been a red card, it is undeniable that the president of a country pressuring the FIFA president to go against a rule it hasn’t broken in 64 years is a baseline example of political corruption in sports. Infantino and Trump already have a questionable relationship, as the former’s gifting of the  “FIFA Peace Prize” to Trump raised conflict-of-interest questions that have now only grown louder. 

“Decisions on sporting rules and sporting matters belong to sporting bodies, not politicians. Influencing sporting decisions would undermine the autonomy of sport,” European Commissioner for Fairness Glenn Micallef wrote on X. “Our focus should instead be on the real governance challenges facing sport, including the weaponisation of sport for political purposes.” 

All’s fair in love and Trumpworld.

Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former fixer turned political defector, is reportedly back on good terms with the president, according to the New York Post.

Cohen had served as a personal attorney to Trump for more than a decade before he became the middleman in Trump’s hush-money fiasco with porn star Stormy Daniels. To save himself, Cohen testified in Trump’s 2024 criminal trial, divulging that the real estate tycoon had directed him to pay Daniels ahead of the 2016 election in order to quell reports that Trump had had an extramarital affair with the adult film star circa 2006.

The hush-money trial ultimately found Trump guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records, but the bad blood between Cohen and Trump is apparently history.

Cohen, as of this past weekend, has landed a new gig at 770 WABC radio—with the president’s blessing.

Cohen told the Post that the new gig will be “completely liberating” and give him an “unfiltered pipeline to the people.”

“I’m moving my 1.5 million followers from my podcasts, YouTube, and Substack over to this new platform, and it’s an absolute rush to have a space where I can give them the plain, unvarnished truth,” Cohen said on Sunday, noting that “after everything I’ve been through, I know exactly what BS smells like, and I’m here to call it out every single day.

“I’m here to use my past and my insider knowledge to pull back the curtain and set the record straight for them,” Cohen told the Post.

WABC owner and major Trump supporter John Catsimidatidis told the Post that Cohen and Trump had made amends.

“I checked with the White House and they had no objection,” Catsimatidis said. “I understand everything is fine.”

Cohen is expected to take over the Sunday slot from Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced ex-governor of New York, though Cohen is reportedly vying for a regular, five-days-a-week show. His voice will be heard on the conservative talk radio station beginning July 12.

“I was told the president gave me a glowing recommendation for this gig because he believes I’m going to be the next Rush Limbaugh,” Cohen said.

President Donald Trump is sitting on a more than $350 million war chest, but Republicans are starting to feel shortchanged, Politico reported Monday.

MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, hasn’t spent directly on a race since March, when it spent $17,900 to back Georgia Representative Clay Fuller’s campaign. Since then, MAGA Inc. has only given $560,000 to MAGA KY, which used it to back Ed Gallrein’s challenge against Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie.

Trump has openly mocked mounting concerns about affordability, and actively downplayed Republicans’ efforts to address it. Now, Republicans are frustrated that the president hasn’t spent a dime to convince voters that his party actually cares about them.

“We didn’t leave our most powerful missiles on the ships when we were trying to crush Iran. Money is the political equivalent in politics,” a GOP lobbyist and donor told Politico. “The electorate’s mindset on the economy is normally locked in stone by Labor Day after a summer of backyard conversations and paying for summer vacation gas.

“Now is the time to sell the message—America 250, the world loves America, the Democrats are crazy left again, and we sealed the border,” the lobbyist added.

Matthew Bartlett, Republican strategist and former Trump appointee to the State Department in the first administration, wasn’t optimistic that help was on the way.

“What makes you think they’re going to spend? We’ve been waiting for the cavalry,” Bartlett told Politico. “Every day matters about shaping sentiment and ideas, and when you have limited time, you should be attacking that early. So the notion of waiting is just inherently concerning … but even more of like, are you even actually going to be playing?”

Beyond sorely neglecting Republican candidates in November’s midterm elections, in some cases, Trump has actively undermined them.

President Trump took a shot at Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni Sunday afternoon on Truth Social, posting a picture showing her looking up at him with the caption “restraining order needed.”

Trump’s latest attempt to antagonize Meloni comes ahead of a NATO meeting in Turkey on Tuesday, which both leaders will be attending.

Last month, the president nearly sparked a diplomatic crisis by claiming to an Italian TV station that Meloni “begged” him for a picture with her at a G7 summit in France.

“She wanted a picture with me so badly. I wouldn’t have taken it, but I felt sorry for her,” Trump said. Meloni denied ever saying that, posting a video on X stating, “Neither I nor Italy ever beg,” in Italian.

“Donald Trump’s statements are completely made up,” Meloni said. “I am frankly astonished. I don’t ‌know why ⁠the president of the United States behaves like this towards his allies: It is not the first time, moreover.”

After that, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani canceled a planned trip to the U.S., calling Trump’s remarks “serious and offensive.” Footage emerged from the summit of Meloni appearing to speak forcefully toward Trump, not appearing to beg at all.

Trump doubled down days later, claiming that Meloni asked for a picture “over and over” and telling NBC News that she “was a big fan” of his.

“But I don’t want her as a fan because she was not there―along with the NATO group―having to do with the strait,” Trump said, referring to Italy’s refusal to join in any efforts to retake the Strait of Hormuz along with other European allies of the U.S. He also mocked Meloni and claimed she needed a photo with him because “she is doing poorly in Italy with her level of popularity.”

“My popularity is none of your concern,” Meloni later replied. “I suggest you focus on yours.”

What his intention is with his latest post doesn’t make sense, and is likely to make things worse. He clearly has some kind of obsession with her, as he called her a “beautiful young woman” in an embarrassing moment at a peace summit in Egypt last year. She was less than impressed.

President Trump is once again attacking Smithsonian director Lonnie Bunch and the museum system, the latest development in his “war on wokeness.”

“The Smithsonian Institution, and the National Museum of American History in particular, under its current leadership and current interpretive ideology, cannot be trusted to tell America’s story honestly and in a way that is inspiring, unifying, and worthy of our great republic,” the White House Domestic Policy Council wrote in a report published the evening of July 4.

“As this report shows, confirmed in the words of Museum leadership, this ideological capture has moved the Museum’s mission away from straightforward historical education and scholarship toward an extreme political activism that seeks to transform our country,” the report continued. “By the intention and at the direction of current Museum and Smithsonian leadership, [the museum] has become subject to institutional capture by a radical, activist ideology that is fundamentally opposed to telling the noble, honest story of the great country we know and love.”

From the Kennedy Center to Ivy League schools to the National Park Service, Trump has made a concerted effort to imbue cultural institutions with a more whitewashed version of American history that minimizes the injustices suffered by minority groups while ignoring the well-documented sins and valid critiques of the country’s Founding Fathers. This is all tied to his “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” executive order signed upon his return to office.

“American history belongs to us all. Any attempt to erase history will fail. It lives in our very DNA,” former DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazile wrote on X.

Last spring, the National Park Service briefly removed a picture of African American slave and freedom fighter Harriet Tubman from its webpage on the Underground Railroad, changed the words “enslaved African Americans” to “enslaved workers,” and removed a section that discussed Benjamin Franklin being a slave owner.

“There’s not one individual narrative that a president gets about our history,” Pennsylvania governor and presidential hopeful Josh Shapiro said in a CNN interview aired the day after Trump’s report. “And any president should want to make sure that that full history is shared, that the American people are able to draw their own conclusions.… If we understand where we came from, we’re going to have a better path forward.”