Trump’s war on woke runs into the First Amendment
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Whether it’s axing the beloved Aunt Jemima from the syrup bottle or removing the Native American woman from the butter tin, the renaming and erasing of “problematic” logos may, in hindsight, be the most vapid, performative, and ultimately useless of all the 2020-era woke excesses. This same culture revolution came for the National Football League, too, with the Washington Redskins, facing tremendous corporate and governmental pressure, finally scrapping their “offensive” name and mascot, even though 90% of actual Native Americans were not offended by it. When you think about it, it’s the sensibilities of white liberals that really matter, no?
Yet, five years later, the infamous “Redskins” branding could be making a comeback, if President Donald Trump gets his way. He sparked a firestorm Sunday by writing on Truth Social, “The Washington ‘Whatever’s’ should IMMEDIATELY change their name back to the Washington Redskins Football Team. There is a big clamoring for this. Our great Indian people, in massive numbers, want this to happen. Their heritage and prestige is systematically being taken away from them. Times are different now than they were three or four years ago. We are a Country of passion and common sense. OWNERS, GET IT DONE!!!”
But the president wasn’t just expressing his personal opinion. Trump added in a follow up post that he may leverage the power of the presidency to force the Commanders to bring back their old name, explaining, “I may put a restriction on them that if they don’t change the name back to the original ‘Washington Redskins,’ and get rid of the ridiculous moniker, ‘Washington Commanders,’ I won’t make a deal for them to build a Stadium in Washington. The Team would be much more valuable, and the Deal would be more exciting for everyone.”
This is where Trump loses me, and should lose all consistent supporters of free speech and the First Amendment.
No president or government official has the right to tell a private sports team what name it must call itself, or leverage government power to bully it into submission. As the nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (Disclaimer: I do a small amount of freelance work for this organization) pointed out on X, that’s an attack on free speech, whether it’s supporters of the Redskins branding like Trump doing it, or Democratic haters like D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who wanted the team renamed in the first place and similarly tried to use state power to make it happen.
Let’s be honest: If a liberal president did exactly what Trump is threatening to do to get rid of a private organization’s “offensive” name, Republicans would cry censorship and overreach — and they would be right.
And, ironically, as Reason’s Billy Binion explains, Trump is ignoring the real reason to kill the stadium deal: it’s a crony capitalist handout of special tax breaks and $1 billion in taxpayer money to an NFL team that doesn’t need it, in hopes of fulfilling job creation promises that almost never materialize from these kinds of deals.
The funniest part of this strange saga, however, is the old 2013 Trump tweet people have dug up, given his sudden support for presidential leverage on NFL teams’ name selection: “President should not be telling the Washington Redskins to change their name — our country has far bigger problems! FOCUS on them, not nonsense.”
If you ask me, Trump was right — the first time.
Brad Polumbo is an independent journalist and host of the Brad vs Everyone podcast.
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