Trump Was Booed by a Global Audience at the World Cup Final, Then Refused to Leave the Stage
The world’s biggest sporting event gave Donald Trump a live audit of his standing abroad, and he responded by planting himself in the middle of Spain’s trophy celebration.
Donald Trump was booed at MetLife Stadium on Sunday when he walked onto the field for the World Cup trophy ceremony, capping a day in which a global crowd made its feelings about the American president unmistakably clear. Spain had just beaten Argentina 1-0, with Ferran Torres scoring off the bench against a ten-man Argentine side reduced by Enzo Fernández’s red card.
Trump emerged from the tunnel alongside FIFA President Gianni Infantino, and the stadium answered with boos and jeers while he waved.
It was the second time in three hours. Trump was shown on the stadium’s video boards moments after Jennifer Hudson finished the national anthem, and the crowd turned on him immediately, with boos and whistles picked up both on the Fox broadcast feed and in fan video circulating from inside the stadium.
This was not a partisan American crowd. It was a capacity house of Spanish and Argentine supporters, plus fans from dozens of other countries, gathered for the final of the tournament the United States is hosting. Trump has spent eighteen months insisting that America is respected again. Given a stadium full of the actual world, he got his answer in real time.
He would not get off the stage
Trump was joined on the podium by Infantino, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, and Spain’s King Felipe VI. He placed the medals around the players’ necks himself, and while Infantino technically handed the trophy to Spain captain Rodri, Trump was the only one of the three host-nation leaders standing there when it happened.
Then he stayed. Rather than stepping back so the champions could have the moment they had spent a month earning, Trump remained planted at the front of the stage. Infantino had to jog across the podium to reach him, and Trump still did not move. Rodri lifted the trophy anyway, with an uninvited guest in the frame.
Anyone who watched last summer’s Club World Cup final at the same stadium saw this coming. Trump did the identical thing to Chelsea, refusing to leave the stage as the players tried to celebrate, until Infantino physically pulled him back.
Chelsea captain Reece James said afterward that he had been told the president would present the trophy and exit, and that Trump simply wanted to stay.
Video of Sunday’s ceremony:
The intervention that helped sink the U.S. team
Trump’s fingerprints were on this tournament long before the final. After a red card temporarily suspended U.S. striker Folarin Balogun ahead of the round of sixteen against Belgium, Trump personally called Infantino and the suspension was overturned. The Americans then delivered one of their worst performances of the tournament and were eliminated 4-1. Belgium’s federation trolled both the team and the president afterward.
The favor-trading has drawn objections from people who actually run the sport. Trump’s relationship with Infantino, and the FIFA president’s apparent willingness to accommodate him, has drawn criticism from inside U.S. Soccer itself as well as from other countries.
FIFA moved offices into Trump Tower. Infantino invented a “FIFA Peace Prize” and gave it to Trump at the December draw. The original Club World Cup trophy sits in the Oval Office, and Chelsea lifted a replica.
The boos match the polling
Sunday’s reception was not an outlier or a New Jersey quirk. Across 36 countries surveyed by Pew Research Center this spring, a median of just 23 percent of adults expressed confidence in Trump to do the right thing in world affairs.
That is lower than confidence in Emmanuel Macron, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Xi Jinping, and Vladimir Putin. Among the leaders tested, only Benjamin Netanyahu scored worse.
The same research found favorable views of the United States falling in country after country, with double-digit drops over a single year in Indonesia, Italy, Nigeria, South Africa, South Korea, and Turkey.
The stadium on Sunday was simply the polling data with a sound system.
Bill Clinton skipped the 1994 final and sent Al Gore. Trump insisted on the podium, took the microphone moment away from the champions, and got booed for it by tens of thousands of people who traveled from around the world to be there. He wanted the whole planet watching. It was.
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