Juventus Stood Behind Trump as He Mused About Bombing Iran
A bizarre and distasteful White House visit for the Italian football club.
American championship teams traditionally visit the White House to mark their victories, but Juventus are not a championship team at the moment. They aren’t American, either, though they do have two American players, so the team met the American president in the Oval Office on Wednesday and stood behind him at the Resolute Desk as he mused about bombing Iran:
I have a meeting in the war room in a little while. “The Situation Room” as some people call it. So we’re gonna meet, we’re gonna see, we’re in the midst of — it’s a terrible thing, I hate to see it. So much death and destruction, but death primarily … I have ideas as to what to do, but I like to make the final decision one second before it’s due, you know? Because things change. Especially with war. Things change with war. It can go from one extreme to the other. War is very bad. There was no reason for this to be a war, there was no reason for Russia-Ukraine, a lot of wars there was no reason for. You look right up there, I don’t know, see the Declaration of Independence, and I say, “I wonder if the Civil War” — always seemed to me that could’ve been solved without losing 600,000-plus people.1
Then they were treated to a very normal presidential interaction, per the Guardian:
“Could a woman make your team, fellas?” Trump asked the players, who smiled nervously but did not offer a response.
When Trump asked the question again, Juventus’s general manager, Damien Comolli, attempted to deflect the query. “We have a very good women’s team,” he said of Juventus Women, who are the reigning Serie A champions.
“But they should be playing with women,” said Trump as Comolli looked at the floor and chose not to answer.
“See, they’re very diplomatic,” Trump said, wheeling around to face the wall of cameras again.
Before that, there was a monologue about how his predecessor was clearly mentally incapacitated as president because Joe Biden would never have supported an invasion of people “from prisons and gangs and drug dealers and all of that — the mentally insane.”
All the while, the players stood silently just behind him in their white Juventus hoodies. Some of the non-Americans smiled at each other slightly as the surreal scene unfolded, and who could blame them? It all evoked the words of another predecessor, George W. Bush, leaving Trump’s first inauguration speech: “That was some weird shit.”
For the two Americans’ part, they looked bemused then apprehensive. The American president seemed to direct his transgender questioning primarily at Tim Weah in the beginning, and the Brooklyn-born forward — who spent time in Paris and now lives in northern Italy, and whose father was one of the great players of all time before he became president of Liberia — kind of half-answered, “Yeah.” While Comolli was deflecting a second round of transgender questioning, Weston McKennie turned to a teammate on the other side of the room and produced a wide-eyed expression.
Somehow, decision-makers at Juventus convinced themselves they could go to the White House without any of this weird shit going down. The day before, the president was holed up in there Bleeting about assassinating the Ayatollah:
We know exactly where the so-called “Supreme Leader” is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there - We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.
These days he seems to say whatever comes to mind, instantly, in a way that puts even his former self to shame. His vocabulary appears to have shrunk from 88 to 57 total words. Even if you have no moral issue with his masked agents of the state disappearing people off the street, a visit with the president is unlikely to be a public relations victory. This was a botched attempt at the kind of ethics-free transactionalism that defines the tournament that brought this club Stateside.
Don’t miss the beginning, by the way, when Trump asked Juventus owner John Elkann if their opponents that evening, Al Ain of the United Arab Emirates, were a good team. “All the teams are good,” replied the heir to the Agnelli family’s conglomerated business dynasty. “It’s the best teams in the world that are here in America.”
“Right, Gianni, you think?” Trump said, turning all the way to his right towards someone just out of camera shot. In leaned FIFA president Gianni Infantino: “The best teams in the world are here.” An appropriate level of honesty for the surroundings.
The Declaration of Independence was signed 85 years before the Civil War.