On Sunday, February 8, one of the most important sporting, cultural and social events of the year in the United States will take place: the final of the NFL, the American football league, the famous Super Bowl. Thousands of people will go to the Santa Clara stadium, in California, to see the New England Patriots against the Seattle Seahawks, but also Green Day and Bad Bunny. But the one who will not be there will be the president of the country, Donald Trump.
It is not common for a president to attend this great sports final; In fact, Trump himself was the first to do it precisely last year, in the game that pitted the Kansas City Chiefs against the Philadelphia Eagles (and which they won by a large margin). The president likes to be seen, but this year he has decided to take a step back from his public exposure. By all accounts, he has assured that the stadium is too far from the White House and that he also does not like Green Day or Bad Bunny. A few months ago, when the Puerto Rican singer’s performance was announced at the game’s halftime, the president even stated that he did not even know him.
“I am anti them,” he said in an interview with the newspaper The New York Post held a few days ago in the Oval Office and published this weekend. “I think it’s a terrible choice. All it does is sow hatred. Terrible,” he added about the NFL’s decision for the show halftime of the match.
Even so, he insists that it is not because of the presence of the musicians that he has decided to skip it. “It’s simply too far. I would go, they like me,” he said. “I would go, you know, if (the flight) was a little bit shorter.” Santa Clara Stadium is located in California, on the West Coast of the country, in the Bay Area, about 45 minutes south of San Francisco. From Washington it is about a six-hour flight and there are three time zones difference.
Last year, Trump flew to New Orleans to watch the final, a trip that lasted about two and a half hours. The president regularly travels to political and sporting events on the East coast, but he is not a regular on the West coast (much more progressive and Democratic). In addition, CNN points out that in that area they do not have properties to stay in, and that may be part of the reason, because they usually avoid hotels and prefer to sleep in their own homes.
The absence of the president may help to avoid inflaming the sporting event in a very polarized country. Plus, those singers he claims to hate so much probably won’t miss him too much. They do not profess much sympathy either for the president or for his immigration policies. Recently, the leader of the band Green Day, Billie Joe Armstrong, spoke clearly about the band’s election and about the protests in Minnesota, in which thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest against the harsh policies of the Immigration Service (known by its acronym ICE), which have left two dead along the way, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
“I’m not part of the Republican agenda. I’m not part of the MAGA agenda,” Armstrong said, referring to the acronym used by the president and his acolytes. Make America Great Again (Let’s make America great again). He has also described the Trump Government as “fascist” and has asked the public at his concerts to fight against the regime.
Bad Bunny, Puerto Rican and, therefore, a US citizen, has also spoken clearly against ICE policies. After a successful concert residency in his native Puerto Rico, and in the midst of a concert tour that will take him throughout Latin America, Europe and Asia, a few months ago he explained that the random and violent persecutions and arrests carried out by ICE were the main reasons why he had made the conscious decision not to do shows in the continental United States. Knowing that many of his listeners and fans were Latino, he feared that there would be raids on his concerts.
“People from the United States could come here to see the show. Latinos and Puerto Ricans from the United States could also travel here, or anywhere in the world. But there was the problem that, damn, ICE could be out (of the concert). And it’s something we talked about and that worried us a lot,” he explained in an interview with the publication. GQ.
The Trump Administration responded in a threatening tone, stating that there were also going to be ICE agents present at that Super Bowl. “There is no place in this country that provides a safe haven for people who are here illegally. Not at the Super Bowl or anywhere else,” Department of Homeland Security adviser Corey Lewandowski, who was also Trump’s campaign manager in the 2016 election, said in a podcast. He continued: “We will find them. We will detain them. We will send them to a detention center and we will deport them. So keep in mind that this is a very real situation. under this Administration.”
Days later, Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, in charge of ICE, said in another podcast that immigration agents will be “everywhere” during the sporting event.
We will have to wait a couple of weeks to know if ICE will finally be present in the vicinity of the stadium and if it dares to act as forcefully as those responsible say. In that case, the always complex logistics of such a party can become a real mousetrap that the president will watch from the couch at home.
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