When it comes to sportswashing, Trump is off to the races
The president has always been an entertainer — but staging spectacles from the Oval Office is precisely what autocrats do to boost their image.
Donald Trump seemed genuinely happy last Sunday as he waved the green flag to start the Freedom 250 Grand Prix, the first IndyCar race in the nation’s capital. Whether you regarded the event as crass exploitation or a rousing sports presentation, it certainly wasn’t surprising.
Way before he became a politician, the president was an entertainer.
Trump made cameos in movies, headlined his own reality TV show, The Apprentice, and organized high-profile boxing matches and MMA fights at his casinos. He owned the Miss Universe pageant and a football franchise of the short-lived USFL, brought in Michael Jackson to the grand opening of his Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, and he even “fought” in wrestling bouts himself.
As a journalist based in Berlin, I’ve done a great deal of reporting over the past decade about the global tilt to the political right. What Trump has done as president, especially in his second term, echoes what autocrats around the world do to boost their public image.
The race was already the final event of Trump’s attempt to commandeer America’s Semiquincentennial festivities under the Freedom 250 banner. But just in case it wasn’t clear who the star was, the military flyover and the presidential limousine cruising down Pennsylvania Avenue before the race made it obvious. The president was also front and center (it was coincidentally his birthday, after all) when he used the South Lawn of the White House to host a mixed martial arts event on June 14.
It seems fitting that, just like Trump’s family businesses have no problem taking large amounts of money from the leaders of authoritarian nations like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — including $2 billion to a private equity firm founded by son-in-law Jared Kushner and $500 million for the Trumps’ crypto ventures — the president would also take to their sportswashing playbook.
Both the Saudi government and the UAE have used sports and entertainment to improve their global reputation and distract from allegations of human rights abuses and repressive policies.
Trump’s supporters may argue that the president’s great race wasn’t much different from the high-profile sporting contests that are held in European capitals — and they would be right, up to a point. A crucial difference is that most of those European events have historical and communal aspects to them that are very different from the spectacles Trump is setting up left and right.
The Monaco Grand Prix, for instance, was first held in 1929, during a time when European motor sports were gradually turning professional. In the years leading up to the first race in the principality, other famous European circuits like Monza, the Nürburgring, or Spa-Francorchamps had held their first races, so it was fitting for the time.
The Tour de France has been held since 1903 and was founded as a marketing ploy for a French sports paper. The first tour consisted of only six stages, ended in a small suburb of Paris, and developed steadily over time to become the global phenomenon we know today. Formula E races are held in world capitals, but in restricted spaces like former airports or fairgrounds.
Trump’s Freedom 250 Grand Prix had more in common with the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku.
A former member state of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan had been ruled autocratically by former Azerbaijani KGB head Heydar Aliyev since 1993. Shortly before his death in 2003, he had his son take over in an election described as fraudulent by independent observers. Ilham Aliyev has been ruling the country ever since — and has implemented a thorough sportswashing strategy for more than a decade.
Baku has hosted European Football Championship games and has been a sponsor of Spain’s Atlético Madrid. For the grand prix, the country pays 40 million to 50 million euros per year to Formula One — all while freedom of speech is highly restricted, journalists are being jailed, and there’s a gap — in both income and equity — between the shiny capital of Baku and the rural areas filled with subsistence farmers.
With the ongoing war in the Middle East, the Jeffrey Epstein issue still looming, and the cost of living continuing to rise thanks to his bad policies, Trump may believe he can paper over the cracks with a checkered flag.
After all, if the people can’t afford bread, Trump’s happy to give them circuses.
Wim Orth is a journalist with WELT in Berlin and an Arthur F. Burns fellow at The Inquirer.