Donald Trump in awkward moment with Juventus players during White House visit
U.S. President Donald Trump attempted to win over Juventus footballers with his stance on trans athletes, posing an uncomfortable question during their White House visit on Wednesday.
The 78-year-old hosted several members of the Italian team and club officials in the Oval Office ahead of their FIFA Club World Cup opener against Al-Ain in Washington, D. C., with USMNT players Weston McKennie and Timothy Weah among those present.
They are now set to showcase their skills at DC United's Audi Field against their UAE-based rivals, following criticism of FIFA for "abandoning its principles in an effort to keep President Trump happy" due to a lack of anti-racism messages at this summer's event.
This follows last week's announcement by the Department of Homeland Security that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents will be deployed throughout the tournament, while Iran faces the prospect of having no supporters at next year's FIFA World Cup due to Trump's travel ban, reports the Irish Star.
Despite this, the president tried to redeem himself by making a positive impression when Juventus players and staff joined him in the Oval Office on Wednesday, although it wasn't long before things took a turn for the worse.
While speaking to the media with his guests in tow, Donald Trump broached the contentious issue of transgender athletes. He has ardently promoted this topic ever since he implemented an executive order earlier this year that prohibits biological men from participating in girls' and women's sports.
Throwing out a pointed question to a cluster of players, Trump queried, "Could a woman make your team, fellas," seeking their take on the debate. The players offered only uneasy smiles in lieu of an articulated stance.
Next, Trump turned to another group and reissued his question, this time pressing the general managers for their opinions by asking directly, "What do you think?".
Damien Comolli, Juventus's general manager, sidestepped the controversial topic, pointing out, "We have a very good women's team."
It's no secret that Juventus Women top the Serie A as the reigning champions.
Trump, however, wasn't done there, firing back with: "But they should be playing with women," as Comolli looked to the floor and chose not to answer. "He's being very diplomatic," said Trump as he looked back towards the cameras.
In response to the awkward encounter, many took to social media to slam Trump for trying to bait the team into endorsing his transphobia, while also praising Juventus for maintaining their professionalism.
In an online comment, one individual stated: "Crazy when a soccer team is more diplomatic than the President of the United States," referring to X's post.
"He's so awful, but the players and coaches handled it well," commented someone else.
Another social media user said: "Kudos to Juventus @juventusfc and @DamienJComolli for responding with great dignity. 'We have a very good women's team'."
A further comment read: "Maga is more obsessed with trans people than trans people."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RTÉ News
an hour ago
- RTÉ News
Putin's counter-narratives and stalled talks
If you were to only listen to Russian President Vladimir Putin's account of the war in Ukraine (as many millions of Russians do), you might conclude that Russia somehow stumbled into the conflict unwittingly, almost as if it were forced to invade its neighbour. Russia's leader told reporters at this week's St Petersburg International Economic Forum that he had told former US President Joe Biden during one of their last phone conversations (clearly, just before Moscow began its full-scale invasion in February 2022), that "conflicts, especially hot conflicts, must be avoided, and that all issues should be resolved through peaceful means." It was a brazen-faced claim from the man who started the largest conventional war in Europe since World War II. Mr Putin, just like current US President Donald Trump, is running a narrative that the Biden administration was at fault for not trying to stop a war that, in truth, Russia was hell-bent on starting anyway. Since returning to the White House in January, Mr Trump has repeatedly said that the conflict is "Biden's war". Mr Trump has also repeatedly claimed that the war would not have started if he had been president. On this hypothetical point, Mr Putin, is now in agreement too. "Indeed, had Trump been the president, perhaps this conflict would not have happened. I fully acknowledge that possibility," said the Russian leader during the same press event on Thursday in St Petersburg. What Mr Putin really means is: the Biden administration opposed Russia's demands to subjugate Ukraine, whereas Mr Trump, had he been the US president in the months leading up to February 2022, would have been more likely to pressure Ukraine to give in to Russia's demands. For his part, Mr Trump blames another former US President, Barack Obama, also a Democrat, for not dealing with Russia a decade ago. At the G7 meeting in the Canadian Rockies earlier this week, he said the war in Ukraine would not have happened if Russia had still been a member of the club, or G8 as it was known. (Russia was kicked out of the G8 in 2014 after its illegal annexation of Crimea). Despite Mr Trump's claims about how he could have averted the war from starting had he been president, he has failed in his promise to end it quickly since returning to the White House in January. It was always an unrealistic pledge. To its credit, the US, aided by Turkey, managed to get both Ukraine and Russia to hold two sets of brief, but direct talks in Istanbul in May, albeit at a low diplomatic level. Getting Ukraine to the table was never an issue. As early as the second week of March, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had said his country was ready to sign up to a US proposal to a 30-day unconditional ceasefire. The barrier to any ceasefire deal has been Russia, which has repeatedly rejected the US and European-backed ceasefire proposal. Those two sets of direct talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations last month in Istanbul have delivered large-scale prisoner exchanges, humanitarian gestures that do just about enough to keep the US engaged in the process. But otherwise, the talks are at a standstill. Russia is talking about a third set of direct talks, but the Ukrainian side say they have heard nothing from Moscow. Yesterday, at the same conference in St Petersburg, Mr Putin said, as he has done previously, that he considers Russians and Ukrainians to be "one people". "In that sense the whole of Ukraine is ours," he said. That statement shows that Russia's position has not changed since it launched the war. It still disregards Ukraine's sovereignty, although Mr Putin also says that Russia is not seeking Ukraine's capitulation. According to Ukraine's first deputy foreign minister Serhii Kyslytsia, during the second meeting in Instanbul, the head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, described the war as "Russians killing Russians". Mr Medinsky, an ultranationalist historian, has previously questioned the existence of the Ukrainian and Mr Putin's decision to appoint him as the head of the Russian delegation is a clear signal that Moscow has no intention to negotiate. "The talks in Istanbul have demonstrated that Russia has no interest in pursuing peace and is pursuing its maximalist demands," Peter Dickinson, a Kyiv-based editor of the Atlantic Council's Ukraine Alert, told RTÉ News. Instead of pursuing peace, Russia, emboldened by a lack of pressure from the US to end the war, is intensifying its drone and missile assaults on Ukrainian cities. Last Tuesday morning's deadly Russian drone and missile assault on Kyiv – a nine-hour assault and the largest so far this year – killed 30 people and injured more than 170. Twenty-three of the victims, a death toll that included children, were residents of a 9-storey block of flats in the city's western suburb of Solomianskyi. It was struck by a Russian missile. "I think people in Kyiv are very alarmed about the rising number of attacks," said Mr Dickinson. "There's a feeling that people are sitting ducks". This week, Mr Putin also said that he was willing to meet with Mr Zelensky during a final phase of negotiations. However, he quickly followed that statement by questioning the legitimacy of Mr Zelensky's presidency – a long-running Kremlin propaganda narrative that Mr Trump briefly bought into back in March, wrongly labelling the Ukrainian president as "a dictator without elections". Russia argues that Ukraine must hold new presidential elections given that Mr Zelensky's term as president officially ended in May 2024. It was the stuff of more counter-narrative fantasy. Mr Zelensky is a democratically elected leader whereas Russia's elections are rigged like a piece of scripted theatre. While Mr Putin continues his counter-narratives and Russia continues its attacks, Ukraine is still pursuing its strategy of calling for a ceasefire first before there is any talk over territorial issues. Mr Zelensky had arrived in the Canadian Rockies for the G7 meeting on Tuesday - the same day that Russia launched its massive drone and missile on Kyiv - hoping to get some face time with Mr Trump. But his long journey had been in vain. Mr Trump had left early to deal with the escalating situation in the Middle East, according to the White House. And so Mr Zelensky ended up meeting his European partners (plus Canada's new PM Mark Carney), just as he could have done in Europe. Mr Trump's departure may have been a coincidence but, either way, it demonstrated just how low down Ukraine features on the US president's list of priorities. "As of now, no productive talks are possible," said Oleksandr Kraiev, a Ukrainian foreign policy expert at the Ukrainian Prism thinktank in Kyiv. The West, he argues, needs to considering targeting Russia's trading partners in Asia, particularly China, with "proper second-grade sanctions" in order to pressure Moscow to stop the war. "The idea from the Ukrainian side is to find a new format that could change the pressure on Russia," said Mr Kraeiv. That new diplomatic format would need Europe to play more of a role in pressuring Russia to seriously negotiate given the Trump administration's reluctance to introduce new sanctions on Moscow. But more than a month after the leaders of France, Germany, Poland and the UK travelled to Kyiv and gave Russia a 48-hour ultimatum to agree to a ceasefire (or face new sanctions and increased military aid to Kyiv), the steam seems to have run out of European efforts to up the pressure on Russia. Mr Putin had torpedoed that ultimatum by offering direct talks in Istanbul, which Mr Trump approved. 'The Coalition of the Willing', a British and French-led initiative to shore up support for a European peace monitoring force in a post-war scenario, has gone quiet too, perhaps waiting for the outcome of this week's NATO annual summit in The Hague. Crucially, it also lacked US support. "The question now is how do you get Russia to be interested in peace," said Mr Dickinson, who believes it's "futile" to expect the US to make the breakthrough. "Now it's up to Europe to step up and take action but there is still no political will".
Irish Times
4 hours ago
- Irish Times
If Netanyahu wants regime change in Iran, it is unlikely to end well
It is not yet certain whether Donald Trump will approve US involvement in Israel 's assault on Iran which began last week. While Israel has inflicted severe losses on Iran and appears to have disabled its air defences, there is a broad consensus that, without US intervention, the goal of disabling Iran's nuclear programme will be unachievable. To this end, a great deal of attention has been paid to the Fordow nuclear facility , close to the city of Qom, which is at the heart of the programme of uranium enrichment and much of which is located 80-90m underground. In 2009, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that the facility held about 3,000 centrifuges which are central to the enrichment process. Under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the deal which Iran signed in 2015, uranium enrichment ceased at Fordow. But, when the US pulled out of that agreement under the first Trump administration, production restarted. Now the assumption is that only the so-called 'bunker buster' bombs possessed by the US are capable of destroying the facility at Fordow. However, the US president's announcement of a two-week deadline to decide if his country will join Israel's attack speaks to uncertainty regarding its likely success and divisions within his support base. Either way, the one-sided nature of the conflict so far – which has seen Israel inflict far more significant losses on Iran, both in terms of military leadership and civilian casualties, than it has sustained – raises the question of whether regime-change in Tehran is on the agenda. From the outset, Israeli leaders have expressly stated that this is not a key objective. However, they have made it equally clear that they would welcome the fall of the Islamic Republic should it happen. Indeed, Binyamin Netanyahu has called on Iranians to 'stand up for their freedom'. As for Trump, his rhetoric has shifted dramatically over the course of the past several weeks, from an initial position which saw him urge restraint on Netanyahu, and talk up the prospect of success in negotiations with Iran on its nuclear programme, to his more recent darker utterances regarding the prospect of direct US involvement to put an end to Iran's nuclear ambitions. All of this, in turn, suggests Trump has been bounced into supporting Israel's assault on Iran through Netanyahu's pre-emptive actions last Thursday. READ MORE Israel needs Trump's 'bunker buster' but will US enter the war? Listen | 31:22 Since Israel launched air strikes on Iran last Friday, the two states have traded missiles with mounting casualties on both military leaders have been killed as have some of its nuclear scientists but the country's citizens have borne the brunt of the air has said its rationale for the middle-of-the-night attack that sparked the war was its need to ensure, for its own protection, that Iran's nuclear programme is close Iran is to actually having a nuclear bomb is unclear but for Israel to obliterate entirely the nuclear threat it needs the US to join the war, to send its 'bunker buster' mega bomb to destroy the Fordo uranium enrichment facility buried deep in the by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Declan Conlon. While the likely course of US action on Iran remains unpredictable, it is clear that neither Israel nor the United States has a plan for – or indeed any coherent understanding of – what might follow from the fall of the regime in Tehran, beyond wilfully optimistic assumptions regarding its positive impact on the country and the region. However, history teaches us that such optimistic assumptions are rarely well placed. The reality is that when we have seen external involvement in the affairs of Iran and the Middle East more generally, the results have never been straightforward and rarely positive. [ Could Israel's attacks on Iran create a nuclear contamination risk? Opens in new window ] In Iran in 1953, the country's democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadeq, was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Mossadeq's government nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (which was a forerunner to BP), a move that was widely popular in the country but alarming to the UK and the US. As events unfolded, the Shah of Iran, fearing the worst, left the country. However, Mossadeq was removed from power in August 1953 and the Shah returned to preside over an increasingly repressive regime, until his removal during the revolution of 1979. As is so often the case with external interventions of this nature, Mossadeq's removal had unintended consequences. The events of 1953 dealt a severe blow to liberal and democratic politics in Iran while the Shah was seen as little more than an American puppet – factors contributing to the revolution which ended his rule in 1979 and inaugurated the Islamic Republic of Iran. More recently, the ill-conceived US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 brought years of violent conflict to the country, led to the sectarianisation of its politics and helped pave the way for the emergence of the so-called Islamic State , while strengthening the position of the Iranian regime in the region, along the way. Likewise, western intervention in Libya in 2011 did nothing to contribute to peace and stability in that country. This is not to say that Iranians cannot mobilise in the face of a repressive regime; Iran has a long history of such mobilisation. As far back as the early 20th century, the 'constitutional revolution' of the period from 1906 to 1911 saw mass demonstrations that forced the Shah to agree to a written constitution and the establishment of an elected parliament. That mobilisation was motivated by a number of grievances, including disillusionment with the ruling elite, as well as resentment at foreign influence and interference in the affairs of the country. While many of the gains of this period were subsequently reversed, the constitution remained in place until the revolution of 1979. Decades later, mass mobilisation led to the end of the Pahlavi dynasty, which had ruled Iran since 1925 with significant western support. However, the post-1979 period has also witnessed expressions of dissent from the governing orthodoxy in the country. In 2009, mass protests broke out when the hardline Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed victory in the presidential election of June 12th that year, despite widespread electoral irregularities and claims by opposition candidates that the vote was rigged. After the announcement of the results, supporters of opposition candidates took to the streets in protest. By June 15th, as many as two million people were on the streets of Tehran. The protests were ultimately suppressed with the deaths of dozens of protesters and the arrests of thousands. Thirteen years later, unrest and protests broke out again on a mass scale following the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, whose 'crime' was the violation of Iran's mandatory hijab law by wearing hers 'improperly'. The protest movement that followed adopted the slogan 'Women, Life, Freedom' but subsequently grew into open calls for the removal of the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. Once more the protests were violently suppressed, and 500 people lost their lives. Popular mobilisation in Iran for more than 100 years has been driven by domestic actors in pursuit of domestic agendas and never by external forces. It is unlikely that Netanyahu's call on the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow their government will alter that record. Dr Vincent Durac lectures in Middle East politics in the UCD school of politics and international relations
Irish Times
4 hours ago
- Irish Times
Despite being obsessed with money, Donald Trump does not understand how it works
In Dante's Inferno, the poet reserved one of his most ghastly punishments for the crime of forgery. Canto 30 of the Inferno describes the counterfeiter 'Adamo' condemned to the eighth circle of hell, just one above Lucifer in the ninth. In this Canto, Dante and Virgil, his guide through the underworld, meet two falsifiers, one of whom is Maestro Adamo/Master Adam, a counterfeiter who in Dante's youth had tried to debase the Florentine florin. Adamo has studied in Brescia, an Italian city in competition with Florence. He was persuaded by prosperous counts from Romena to debase the florin by replacing three carats of the usually pure gold coin with copper. The coin weighed almost the same, but it was a fake. Dante compares Adam to another liar, Sinon the Greek, the man who tricked the Trojans into believing the Trojan horse was an innocent gift. This betrayal led to the destruction of an entire civilisation. READ MORE Why would Dante equate Adam, an everyday opportunistic counterfeiter, with Sinon, the man who betrayed Troy? It seems disproportionate, but only if we fail to appreciate the central role of the florin in underpinning the might of Florence. In Dante's tale, the man who was undermining the reserve currency was a two-bit fraudster, Adam, whereas today the man undermining the world's reserve currency, the US dollar, is the president of the United States, Donald Trump . Traditionally, when the world is at war, financial markets experience a flight to quality, meaning to dollars. The opposite is happening and, for the first time in 100 years, the world is starting to doubt America's commercial credibility. In the Florentine Republic one florin was worth about €125 in today's money, and to give you a sense of what that meant at the time, a slave girl or a mule could be bought for 50 florins – about €6,000. As the Florentines expanded commercially throughout Europe, the florin became the trademark of the strength of the city as much as a medium of exchange. Pure gold, weighing 3.53 grammes, it became the reserve currency of mercantile Europe, giving it the pre-eminent role in international finance, like the US dollar today. Across the Continent, goods were exchanged in florins, debts were settled in florins, loans were extended in florins and wealth was measured and stored in florins. In the 14th century, the florin became the hardest currency in Europe, accepted widely as the unit of account from London and Bruges in the north, to Alexandria and Tyre in the south. When the world accepts your currency readily, it gives the currency that most elusive of qualities: liquidity. A simple definition of liquidity is the ease and time it takes to settle a trade in a currency. The more liquidity, the easier it is to trade. If, in the case of a coin, there is significant demand for the products underpinning the coin, the number of coins supplied will go up and, while their value will stay the same, their intrinsic usability and therefore practical value increases. Given its liquidity, everyone wanted to settle their account with the florin. The state that mints the money that everyone wants has soft power. Soft power is the power of persuasion. In today's context, consider the power the US dollar gives the United States. Oil, copper, steel, uranium, rare earths, timber, cotton, silk, diamonds – all these commodities are priced internationally in dollars, and to buy them the purchaser must first buy dollars, which the US generates for free. This gives the US a big advantage in global financial affairs. Given such high stakes, why would any president mess with America's most potent weapon? Because, despite being obsessed by money, he doesn't really understand money, how it works and what maintains its mystique. It's about trust (that most ephemeral of characteristics), financial stability and the long-term robustness of entire economic system. [ US borrowing costs top 5% after Moody's downgrade Opens in new window ] Reputations are very hard to establish but easy to squander. Donald Trump is squandering America's reputation as a serious country. The US's economic mix is now a unpredictable mess of unfocused tax cuts, broadening but incoherent tax loopholes, incremental attacks on the rule of law and, of course, chaotic trade wars and tariffs. While these may generate headlines, they do not promote financial stability. In the meantime, in plain sight, the Trump family are enriching themselves in cryptocurrencies. Congress is blessing this heist, while the US president habitually insults the Federal Reserve chairman, stating this week that he'd do a far better job himself, if only he could appoint himself . Is it any surprise that rational people are avoiding the dollar? The real dilemma is that Trump is behaving like a medieval king burning through the kingdom's treasury, which is already overspending. The US federal debt-to-GDP ratio is at its highest level in postwar history and climbing. At 97 per cent to 99 per cent of GDP, the debt is up from 35 per cent of GDP in the 1980s and about 60 per cent before the 2008 financial crisis. This level is comparable to the debt burden just after the second World War (when it peaked around 106 per cent of GDP in 1946). In the past 12 months, the US government spent in excess of $1.8 trillion more than it took in, marking the fifth year in a row with a deficit above $1 trillion. One of the most immediate consequences of high debt is the surging cost of interest. As debt has grown, and the Federal Reserve's rate hikes in 2022–2023 filtered through to government borrowing costs, interest costs have skyrocketed. Last year, the US Treasury paid about $882 billion in interest on the federal debt, roughly 3.1 per cent of GDP. [ Donald Trump pressures Republicans to back his 'big, beautiful' tax Bill Opens in new window ] To put that in perspective, America now spends more just to service its debt than it spends on national defence or Medicare. On top of this already-fraught situation, the One Big Beautiful Act with its tax cuts for the wealthy, will add more debt to the existing $36.7 trillion pile. Official estimates suggest the Trump tax cuts will add another $2.4 trillion to the debt. So who is going to buy all this new debt? Foreigners who historically buy a large share of US Treasuries bought only about 59 per cent of a recent 30-year Treasury auction, the lowest foreign participation since 2019. If foreign investors are to be coaxed to buy more US IOUs then they will have to be offered a higher rate of interest, which could push the US into recession, or a lower dollar which means that the US debt is made cheaper for foreigners. Once this occurs, the dollar and the Donald become intertwined. As US economic credibility is shredded, so too the mystique of the reserve currency. It's early days but a world where the US dollar is not the only reserve currency could be upon us. The Florentine florin was the world's reserve currency for close to 250 years, from the time of Dante to the discovery of the Americas. Wars, poor decision-making and over-spending at home in Florence, as well as the emergence of other commercial powers abroad, chipped away at its elevated status. Could something similar be happening to the US dollar now? Of course it could.
