Trump didn’t ruin the World Cup. He just made it less fun.
The president and his team have made multiple decisions over the last year and a half that could hurt attendance.
A person carries a soccer ball with a picture of President Donald Trump before the draw for the 2026 soccer World Cup at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. on Dec. 5, 2025.Julia Demaree Nikhinson / AP Photo
Jun. 11, 2026, 12:05 PM EDT
By Roey Hadar
American soccer fans have suffered many indignities over the years: waking up before dawn to watch games overseas, enduring the men’s national team’s failures and listening to Alexi Lalas on television broadcasts.
But this year’s FIFA World Cup was supposed to make up for all that.
More than 1 billion people watch the World Cup final, making it the biggest event in sports. It is a global celebration. And in 2026, that celebration was finally supposed to be coming to our backyard.
Then President Donald Trump got involved.
Through a mix of manufactured crises and an apparent desire to make every major event revolve around him, Trump managed to turn the World Cup into a fiasco. It’s the biggest disappointment for American soccer fans since the men’s team failed to qualify in 2018 by losing to Trinidad and Tobago.
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The trouble began in June 2025, when the Trump administration imposed travel restrictions on multiple countries, signaling to fans that the United States might not be a friendly place to visit. From there, longer lines at airport security, a Department of Homeland Security shutdown, threats to send Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to the World Cup, an explicit threat to pull customs officers from airports in some host cities and visa restrictions and denials to some teams all played a part in hurting the tournament.
The World Cup was supposed to be a melting pot of global soccer lovers, drawing visitors from all 48 of the participating countries. But fans from four countries whose teams are in the World Cup — Haiti, Ivory Coast, Iran and Senegal — won’t be allowed in thanks to Trump’s refusal to even temporarily suspend those countries’ travel bans.
One of the tournament’s top referees – Omar Artan – said he was denied entry to the U.S. and held by Customs and Border Protection for 11 hours. The Trump administration said CBP denied him for ties to “suspected members of terror organizations,” but Artan already had a valid visa issued by the State Department.
Iran, currently facing attacks from the U.S. military in a war that Trump entered with no congressional approval and little public support, is set to participate in the World Cup. But even a week from kickoff, the team was still struggling to get visas to let its players get to their matches, forcing it to relocate its base to Mexico.
Even players for ostensible U.S. allies are struggling to get in. Switzerland’s star striker, Breel Embolo, one of the team’s most recognizable players, faced a temporary block on his travel authorization as the U.S. looked into a conviction he had for his role in a fight in 2018.
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And the problems are not limited to other countries. American fans hoping to enjoy the matches also have run into corporate greed.
Ticket prices have become so bad that New York and New Jersey’s attorneys general are investigating FIFA for its ticket practices. Asked about similarly high four-figure ticket prices for the NBA Finals, which he attended on taxpayers’ dime, Trump was blasé.
“They can watch it on television. It’s semi-free to watch it on television,” he said. “But that’s the way life goes.”
And for those fans willing to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a ticket, Trump’s attacks on public transit subsidies and his chummy relationship with FIFA President Gianni Infantino mean fans will not have an ally in their corner to fight for increasingly awful game-day experiences.
NJ Transit’s decision to put the cost of travel entirely on soccer fans means matches in the New York area could cost close to $100 for round-trip transportation that would normally be less than $15.
For fans who have the money for the tickets and transit, Trump could theoretically be leaning on FIFA to rein in its practices seemingly meant to nickel-and-dime customers. Last week, FIFA reversed course and banned fans from bringing water bottles into stadiums despite many matches being played in temperatures above 80 degrees. The organization also plans to ban tailgating at venues.
But soccer fans will tell you that even if they have qualms about the leadership of a host country, they can still enjoy the game.
The 2018 World Cup in Russia held under the iron fist of President Vladimir Putin did not stop fans from appreciating the ascendance of France’s breakout star, Kylian Mbappé.
Despite the horrors of the construction of facilities and the repression of support for LGBTQ rights at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, there was still space to appreciate Lionel Messi finally lifting his first FIFA World Cup trophy for Argentina.
The difference in 2026 is the disruptions are not happening in the background. They are shaping who can attend, how fans travel, what they pay and, in some cases, whether teams can fully participate at all.
The World Cup was supposed to be a celebration of soccer’s ability to bring the world together. Instead, the Trump administration has turned it into a reminder of how quickly politics, bureaucracy and self-inflicted chaos can diminish even the world’s biggest sporting event.
This is a preview of MS NOW’s Project 47 Newsletter. As President Trump continues implementing his ambitious agenda, get expert analysis on the administration’s latest actions and how others are pushing back sent straight to your inbox every Tuesday.
Democrats warn Trump and Republicans are ‘laying the groundwork’ to challenge election results
The California elections results have reignited a debate on Capitol Hill about election integrity, with the two parties drawing very different lessons.
Election workers process mail-in ballots at San Francisco County's election operations facility at City Hall on June 9, 2026, in San Francisco.David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images
Jun. 11, 2026, 5:00 AM EDT
By Lillie Boudreaux
President Donald Trump’s efforts to cast doubt on the California election results are fueling a renewed fight on Capitol Hill over election integrity — and raising Democratic concerns about how Trump and Republicans might respond to unfavorable results in November.
Trump’s unfounded claims of election fraud aren’t exactly new. He’s practically made his assertions that the 2020 election was “rigged” or “stolen” from him a personal catchphrase. (An MS NOW analysis on Wednesday found that, once every four days for the last five months, Trump has falsely claimed he won the 2020 election.)
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But Democrats say Trump’s insistence that Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt was pushed out of a runoff by fraudulent ballots could foreshadow broader efforts to challenge election outcomes this fall. And while some Republicans maintain that the issue is a confidence-shattering vote-counting process that simply takes too long, other Republicans are outright siding with the president and his unfounded claims — including the Speaker of the House.
“Some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream it is impossible to prove,” Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters Monday.
And when pressed for actual evidence of fraud, Johnson turned the question on a reporter, saying, “You tell me.”
“Everybody knows instinctively something is wrong here,” Johnson said.
Democrats are increasingly concerned that kind of rhetoric is a sign of things to come during the midterms, particularly when Republicans are alleging election fraud without evidence.
“What they are doing is they are laying the groundwork to challenge the lawful count of ballots this November,” Chair of the Democratic Caucus, Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., said.
“They will say anything to hold power,” Aguilar continued. “That’s what this is about. The redistricting efforts that they undertook in Texas, their advocacy to dilute Black representation in eliminating the [Voting Right Act]. They will do anything to add seats here in Congress.”
Trump’s election fraud claims have centered around Pratt’s seeming second place finish in the mayoral race getting erased as mail-in ballots were counted in the days after the election. (The mail-in ballots were sent in before Election Day, but the counting has taken days — a typical situation in California.)
For Trump and some Republicans, Pratt moving into third place, and out of the runoff for mayor, has been proof enough that something is amiss — even though Republican Steve Hilton advanced to the November election despite Democratic hopes of keeping a GOP candidate out of the race.
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But Democrats maintain that Pratt doing worse with mail-in ballots than Election Day voters was to be expected.
“The score at halftime is different than the score at the end of the game,” Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., said. “Doesn’t mean there’s fraud; it just means the game was completed, and that’s what we’re seeing right now.”
And Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., told MS NOW that it should be expected that Trump would “deny the results of any election that he loses because he can’t really bear the thought with his identity — like his idea of himself — of the idea that he actually lost.”
“When you lose fair and square,” Ocasio-Cortez continued, “you have to understand that that’s what happened, and we have to respect the will of voters, just like when Democrats lose, you have to respect the will of voters as well.”
Ocasio-Cortez said Democrats should “absolutely be worried” about Trump weaponizing the Department of Justice and potentially trying to interfere with elections in November.
That was a point echoed by the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif.
Garcia emphasized the importance of keeping elections run by local officials, rather than allowing the Trump administration to nationalize elections in the name of securing the contests. “They’re safe, they’re secure, and there’s no fraud that’s happening in California right now,” Garcia said.
“We should be very concerned about what we think the administration is going to do, as it relates to voting, putting possible ICE agents or federal agents at polling locations,” Garcia said.
While few Republicans offered evidence of fraud, several argued that California’s slow vote-counting process erodes confidence in election outcomes.
“I think it has too many concerns,” Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., said of the LA mayoral race. “And even if it isn’t fraudulent, there’s a look that it is fraudulent, because you’re counting votes so long after the fact.”
He added that he wondered where the influx of votes for current LA mayor, Democrat Karen Bass, and progressive challenger Nithya Raman had “come from.”
“And the general public is really — or at least my constituents are — are very concerned about the possibility of the possibility of fraud,” Bost said.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., wasn’t willing to go as far as the speaker. But he did say, “whether you can prove fraud or not,” the fact that the election results have taken so long to tabulate “does undermine voter integrity in the vote.”
“I think it’s raised a lot of skepticism among voters when they see these wide changes days and weeks after the election, and you still can’t get a result two, three weeks after an election happened,” Scalise said.
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Rep. Kevin Kiley, I-Calif. — who changed his party affiliation from the GOP in March — said there are valid concerns around the administration of elections in California. But he said he had seen “no evidence” of fraud.
Kiley told MS NOW it’s “not helpful” when officials echo unfounded claims of election fraud.
“When that gets mixed in with a bunch of other stuff that, you know, may or may not be grounded in reality, then that’s not helpful,” Kiley said.
Kiley said California’s election system deserves scrutiny, particularly when it takes weeks to finalize results. But he said the “broad, bipartisan agreement” that the system needs reforms shouldn’t be conflated with allegations of fraud.
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“I’d prefer that we focus on the problems that clearly do exist, which is the administration of our elections leaves something to be desired,” Kiley said.
Syedah Asghar and Jack Fitzpatrick contributed to this report.
