Let Athletes Do the ‘Trump Dance’ in Peace
Will Leitch, writing for Intelligencer, thinks all this noise about athletes doing the “Trump dance” after touchdowns or goals is much ado about nothing.
But in the same way that I do not believe that every person who voted for Trump explicitly wants the return of fascism and chickenpox, I’m pretty sure doing the Trump Dance isn’t the same thing as donning a MAGA hat or screaming for mass deportations. Pulisic — who, it should be said, has shown Trump-friendly tendencies before — said he decided to do the dance because, “I saw everyone doing it yesterday in the NFL, I saw Jon Jones do it. We’re just having a bit of fun, so I thought it was a pretty fun dance.” This is how information spreads among young people (which athletes are, remember), and particularly the so-called “low-information” voters who delivered Trump back into office. They saw a dance, they thought it was funny, they repeated the dance. When you strip the context away — which you shouldn’t do, but is exactly what they’ve done — it is a funny dance. That’s why we all made fun of it in the first place.
I sincerely don’t care. I’m not a fan of athletes or coaches wearing political paraphernalia during a professional sports match, but otherwise do what you want.