All The President's Men

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On his first day back in office on January 20, 2025, Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders at a makeshift desk set up in the middle of the Capital One Arena, home to the Washington Wizards NBA team and the Washington Capitals hockey team.

With each executive action signed, Trump would pause for dramatic effect before holding up the signature before the estimated 20,000 supporters, who roared and cheered in approval. He then tossed his signing pens to the supporters, promising to sign plenty more at the White House.

The spectacle foreshadowed the central role that sports would play in Trump’s second term.

In the first few months back to the White House, he has attended multiple marquee sporting events – including the Super Bowl, Daytona 500, NCAA Wrestling Championships, UFC fights, and international football finals – while simultaneously issuing executive orders that directly reshape the sporting landscape.

Trump has treated sports not as a sideline diversion but as a central stage for his political theatre.

He has prohibited transgender girls and women from competing in female categories and tied compliance to federal funding. He has reasserted federal control over college athletics and revived the Cold War-era Presidential Fitness Test. And he has launched a White House task force on the 2026 FIFA World Cup and another task force for the 2028 Olympic Summer Games in Los Angeles.

This level of presidential engagement matters because it fuses Trump’s cultural instincts with his MAGA agenda to make America great again. Where past presidents used sports for ceremonial appearances or soft diplomacy, Trump turns them into battlegrounds in the culture wars.

By tying federal education funding to sex-at-birth athletic rules, appointing professional wrestling executives to national fitness councils, or showcasing World Cup trophies in the Oval Office, he transforms sports policy into a vessel for his political messaging.

The spectacle of sports –