Even if Ireland qualify, Trump has ensured World Cup fans will never party like its 1994
Thrashing about in a cesspool of his own ignorant and stinking loathing, Donald Trump continues to shower everything he touches with orange-tainted excrement.This week, the planet's oldest infantile attention-seeker made s**t of the World Cup.And emptied his bowels on Lady Liberty, the torch of America's great symbol of enlightenment all but extinguished by a flourish that makes manure of any jaunty idea announcing the USA as some shining and eternal Land of the Free.With one colonic grunt, Trump ensured that, even if Ireland qualify, a new generation of fans will be unable to reprise the 1994 days of thunder that unfolded on New Jersey grass and, in bars along the avenues of twinkling Manhattan skyscrapers.His latest Orwellian commandment from the White House throne room, the one demanding anybody wishing to enter the United States agree to the vetting of all their social media activity for the past five years, cancels the World Cup party.This is a tariff on happiness and freedom of expression, an F-22 Raptor attack on life as we know it.The US leg of the storied tournament will be run, not by FIFA and its ludicrous figurehead Gianni Infantino, but by some dystopian Big Brother.READ MORE: Donald Trump receives FIFA’s first Peace Prize and claims he has saved 'millions' of livesParanoia will replace joy as the prevailing emotional climate at what has for decades been the great coming together of the planet's disparate tribes.The anticipation of magic will give way to a lurking fear of ambush from some uniformed state militia.A single playful tweet or a throwaway comment to a friend anytime over the last five years could land an entirely innocent football supporter in a detention centre or an ICE interrogation room.Where the defiant fan anthem of "You'll Never Beat the Irish" could take on a whole new, frightening meaning.Perhaps we should be grateful that the Commander-in-Chief has yet to order a Venezuelan-style double-tap assault on tourist boats sailing around Manhattan.Not yet, anyway.On Trump's watch, America, for so long a fertile field for fearless comedy, the nation where Robin Williams and Lenny Bruce and Jerry Seinfeld blossomed, has lost one of its sacred assets: Its sense of humour.Trump, having destroyed pretty much everything else of cultural value, has now come for Jules Rimet's celebration of difference and festival of identity.Desperate to feed the always empty stomach of his ravenous ego, the world's supreme sporting carnival must now be stamped with the branding iron of his bottomless xenophobia.Fortunately, if Ireland maintain the upward trajectory initiated by Troy Parrott and qualify in the spring when the playoffs take place, two of the country's three group stage games will take place in Mexico, the home of the Olé.Assuming Trump hasn't annexed Guadalajara or Mexico City by that stage, and that direct flights bypassing JFK are available, those games (against South Korea and Mexico itself) will offer a glimpse of the traditional World Cup Mardi Gras.As for a possible clash with South Africa, scheduled for Atlanta on June 18th, well that could prove as bitter as the lime in the neck of a Mexican beer bottle.Of course, there is a far deeper issue than just a football tournament at play in America's increasingly hostile attitude to western Europe.For the millions of Irish who regard the United States with such affection, whose back story is illuminated by summers in Boston or Brooklyn or Long Island, the last few days offered just another reason to recoil with a terrible sadness.And to understand an historically warm relationship is withering not just from a lack of watering, but from the choking pesticides with which Trump insists on attacking the roots of the affinity.It is as if the links in a favourite piece of jewellery coming apart and, with nothing to support it, a precious gemstone falls and is lost.The locked-up house of Trump's intellect views Europe - and the freedoms afforded by the liberal world order he so despises - as public enemy number one.His avarice can find few dollar signs upon which to feast on when his beady eyes run the rule over France, the UK, Germany and - yes - Ireland.And money, moolah, greenbacks is the Trumpian world view distilled down to its greedy essence.Long ago house-trained as Vladimir Putin's obedient lapdog, the 47th US President's latest volley of insults and falsehoods aimed at the old continent in an interview with Politico is just his latest intervention that slams the senses.An ill-informed rant, Trump talks of Europe as a "decaying" entity, his ignorance encapsulated in his blaming Russia's merciless and murderous invasion of Ukraine not on Putin's grasping malevolence, but on European governments.Ever the victim, he describes the EU as a "racket" to "screw" America.It follows the naked hostility of the new US National Security Strategy, one that overtly announces America's desire to undermine the traditional, democratic European order.An authentically shocking document, one that reads like a Far Right pamphlet, it prompted the EU's former top diplomat Josep Borrell to describe America's stance as a "declaration of war" on what is traditionally its closest ally.He urges European leaders to cease bowing before Trump, insisting the time for "hiding before a fateful and complacent silence" has long passed.The same document prompted the erudite historian Max Hastings to write an opinion piece that appeared under the headline: "It's now time for Europe to stop pretending that Donald Trump is not the enemy."Hastings articulates a disturbing truth: "The US president and his closest colleagues...are bent upon forging a partnership - strategic, political and cultural - with Vladimir Putin's Russia and distancing America from Europe."Even if diplomatic niceties demand they do so, it is grating to watch European leaders prostrate themselves before a figure who swats them aside with the contempt of a Mafioso big boss - Don by name, Don by nature - sending some underling to sleep with the fishes.As Hastings, author of many of the planet's biggest selling historical tomes, puts it: "Europe is now explicitly identified by the [US] administration as an enemy, the world region where democracy and free speech are allegedly most gravely under threat."The White House appears heedless of Russia's status as an unashamed tyranny - and of the international view that truth has been banished from the US government's lexicon."He concludes ominously: "Some still cling to the hope that if Europe can somehow muddle through to 2028, the Trump nightmare will end. The relationship between the US and its traditional allies will then pick up where it left off."This seems delusional. Even if his successor offers former allies more courtesy and less ignorance, America's direction of travel will likely persist."Of course the appalling Infantino was in his warped element sitting next to Putin at the 2018 World Cup in Russia.At last week's excruciating ceremony where the draw for the 2026 tournament took place, he obsequiously, absurdly, presented the White House overlord with the first - and possibly last - FIFA Peace Prize.That Trump is recognised for "bringing peace and unity to the world through exceptional actions", even as he sows division in every corner of the globe, plastered one more dollop of stinking excrement onto the canvass of decency.The World Cup, the thrilling adventure that gave us the best of Pele and Maradona, that carried Ireland to a place of rapture 35 years ago in Italy, has been irredeemably soiled.A tournament unrivalled in its power to carry the planet towards the fragrant heavens is now is smattered in indelible, orange-toned excrement.Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest news from the Irish Mirror direct to your inbox: Sign up here.
