ATHLETES ARE HAVING A BASH WITH THE TRUMP DANCE, CONTRARY TO MATT GAETZ
The NFL and other leagues won’t penalize players for wiggling hips and arms, as they sway with the new craze, but would-be appointments do deserve our vast attention as Trump celebrates at UFC events
Please do not confuse Matt Gaetz with athletes who perform the Trump Dance. One extreme is worthy of America’s concern, a would-be attorney general allegedly having sex with underage women at ecstasy parties. “The American people deserve to know the truth about the person slated to become the top law enforcement officer in the country,” said attorney Joel Leppard, who also could have referred to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hegseth.
But in a nation seeking division while eating morning pop tarts, any scrutiny of sports events for arms and fists and hips only threatens games that remove us from the fray. Let those who are happy for Donald Trump celebrate the president-elect. And do not compare their goofiness to Colin Kaepernick, whose sideline kneelings were a protest of police brutality and social injustice. If athletes would like to protest Gaetz, have at it.
Thankfully, professional football and other leagues will not punish players who wobble and wiggle.
“It’s considered a dance. It’s not an issue,” the NFL said.
So stop keeping tabs on the current rage. Yes, Nick Bosa is a Trumper, proving it by paying the league a $11,255 fine when he interrupted a post-game interview with his “Make America Great Again” cap. But when teammates Fred Warner, Leonard Floyd and Sam Okuayinonu wanted him to jiggle after a sack, why not? “All the guys wanted me to do it. I wasn’t even going to do it, but the boys reminded me. And it was fun,” said Bosa, who says we “know the answer” to what motivates him.
Brock Bowers? He watched the UFC’s Jon Jones celebrate his Saturday night knockout with a signature frolic beside Trump and Elon Musk in New York. Harmless. “I’ve seen everyone do it. I watched the UFC fight and Jon Jones did it,” the Las Vegas rookie said. “I saw it and thought it was cool.” That’s when the Raiders ended his media availability and didn’t post his comment on post-game quote sheets. Why? The team allows Tom Brady, who once wore a Trump hat, to serve as a minority owner and endangers league rules as a Fox Sports broadcaster. Bowers can’t do a shimmy? Tennessee’s Calvin Ridley and Detroit’s Za’Darius Smith can’t do their two-steps?
Any moment now, LeBron James will post that he’s sick of being an American. Yet I see Black athletes joining white athletes in the boogie beat. It’s happening on college teams. It’s happening in women’s golf, where Charley Hull bopped Sunday in the final round. In soccer, U.S. star Christian Pulisic rocked Monday night after he scored a goal in a 4-2 victory over Jamaica.
“Well, obviously, that’s the Trump dance,” Pulisic said. “It was just a dance that everyone’s doing. He’s the one who created it. I just thought it was funny. I saw everyone doing it yesterday in the NFL. I saw Jon Jones do it.”
What if his dance makes enemies in Europe? “It’s not a political dance. It was just for fun,” Pulisic said. “I saw a bunch of people do it and I thought it was funny, so I enjoyed it. I hope some people did, at least.”
Before long, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan might be bouncing. He played golf with Trump last Friday. This is his way of fixing the monumental issues between the Tour and Saudi-led LIV Golf, and sure enough, he invited Yasir al-Rumayyan, governor of the Public Investment Fund, to the UFC fight. “It would take me the better part of 15 minutes to get that deal done,” Trump said on a podcast with Bill Belichick. “I do think we should have one tour and they should have the best players in that tour.”
Let Rory McIlroy and Phil Mickelson do the jive.
Trump is 78 years old. He won with 312 electoral votes, most ever by a Republican. A thrust of his support comes from young men, rallied by his son, Barron. Americans will have many days, weeks and months to chat about Matt Gaetz. For now, enjoy the craze, described by Politico as “our awkward uncle dancing at a wedding after quaffing Aperol spritz from the free bar.”
“Pulisic scores. Pulisic does the Trump Dance,” TV’s Alexi Lalas wrote on X. “We're winning the World Cup ... bigly.”
Folks cannot get mad at the new Macarena. America seems happy, at least slightly more than one-half of it. And those who aren’t happy?
“Trump appears lost, confused, and frozen,” said an account from @KamalaHQ.
She finished second in the presidential race.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.