How much longer can Donald Trump go missing from the World Cup?
Why this matters: political developments that affect policy direction and public trust.
Some of soccer’s biggest names have come to play at the World Cup: Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé, Erling Haaland, Vinícius Júnior and now even Cristiano Ronaldo have left their mark on the score sheet. But one key player who loomed over just about every step of pre-tournament preparations has been notably invisible: Donald Trump. Pre-tournament fears that the American president would trample on the soccer jamboree have, so far, proved largely unfounded after the first two weeks of competition. Trump has yet to attend a match, and even as the U.S. team mounts its best World Cup performance in decades he has done little to claim the success as his own. Aside from persistent complications surrounding the Iran squad’s entry and exit to the U.S. for games, and the ban on a Somali referee from entering the country before the tournament started, political incidents involving the Trump administration and soccer — or leaders of other World Cup countries, including the neighboring co-hosts with whom he often spars — have been few and far between. No ICE arrests around matches. No heavy-handed policing like soccer fans sometimes suffer in Western Europe. No beef between Trump and Democratic leaders of cities and states where some of the tournament’s highest-profile matches have been played. As one European-based senior sports executive told POLITICO last year about the administration and the World Cup, “Why would they want to f---k it up?” Secretary of State Marco Rubio attended the USMNT’s opener against Paraguay in Los Angeles, while Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — along with other senior Cabinet officials — was at the American match vs. Australia in Seattle. Though Trump himself hasn’t been to a game yet, he did send the U.S. squad a message of support at the start of the tournament. In an interview last week with POLITICO, Massachusetts Democratic Gov. Maura Healey said her administration had worked with the U.S. government “around transportation