Today’s newsletter was going to be an essay about the finale of The Traitors US, which aired last Thursday. However, I felt increasingly weird ignoring the current geopolitical events, especially in the context of being right in the middle of an Olympic and Paralympic Games. So today you’re getting a news roundup, largely addressing what the United States’s attack on Iran means (or should mean) in a sporting context.

For All-Access VIP and Biggest Fan tier subscribers, two events this month! Yesterday I sent out registration for March’s Out of Your League Book Club, which will be on Sunday, March 29 at 2 PM ET/11 AM PT. We will be discussing Turning Pointe: How a New Generation of Dancers is Saving Ballet From Itself by Chloe Angyal. We will also be doing an OOYL WBB March Madness Bracket Pool again this year, so stay tuned for info on how to participate in that. If you’d like to join us with events and hang out in our subscriber Discord, you can upgrade your subscription tier here:

Trump's use of sports has been textbook when it comes to authoritarian regimes (see also: Nazi Germany and Putin's Russia), and you can draw a direct line from the U.S. men’s hockey team’s White House visit to the bombing of Iran just days later.

After the U.S. men visited the White House, they said the visit "wasn't political." But that misunderstands the entire function of a gold medal national team in the hands of someone like Trump. Trump put those men on display as a show of the United States' strength, as a distraction from the atrocities being committed by his administration, and as a way to bolster feelings of nationalism among the masses. 

Once the men had co-signed their likenesses being used in this way, the White House's official account released an AI video of Brady Tkachuk shit-talking Canadians, which he decried (did the leopards eat your face? Is this your king? etc etc). But the video served its purpose, to use a sporting hero to help create an "us vs. them" mentality between the American public and foreign governments.

Days later, the U.S. was bombing Iran. This is a clear violation of the Olympic Truce, which is a United Nations resolution that says countries won’t initiate conflict from seven days before the Olympics begin until seven days after the Paralympics end. Following the U.S. and Israel’s illegal military action in Iran, the IOC released a statement calling the truce “aspirational” and asserting their “political neutrality.” They washed their hands of the whole thing by saying they had “no means to enforce” the Olympic Truce, which is what they said when international federations started banning trans women despite IOC guidance saying they shouldn’t be doing so. The IOC loves a toothless framework!

Countries who commit war crimes or violate international law are not supposed to be allowed to host or participate in international sporting events. There are varying degrees to how this works and what qualifies, and many of the international governing bodies tend to be hypocritical in terms of how these are enforced (see: Russia receiving IOC sanctions but not Israel). However, this uniquely impacts the United States in the coming weeks, months, and years.

What any of this means for the United States’ ability to host the World Cup later this year or the 2028 Olympic Games in LA remains to be seen (I don’t have high hopes that any meaningful action will be taken, of course), but all these events are key tools when it comes to "sportswashing" the U.S. reputation on an international stage.

Trump knows exactly what he is doing, and it's why sports are always political.