Donald Trump is never one to shy away from a fight, especially when it comes to pushing back against the left’s cultural overreach. But his latest threat — to block a new stadium for the Washington Commanders unless the team reverts to its old “Redskins” name — feels like a misstep. While his underlying point about corporate cowardice and woke overreach has merit, is it really his place to get involved?
“The Washington ‘Whatever’s’ should IMMEDIATELY change their name back to the Washington Redskins Football Team,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “There is a big clamoring for this. Likewise, the Cleveland Indians, one of the six original baseball teams, with a storied past. Our great Indian people, in massive numbers, want this to happen. Their heritage and prestige is [sic] 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!!!”
He also floated the idea of blocking the team’s plans for a new stadium
"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,” he said in a follow-up post on Truth Social. “The Team would be much more valuable, and the Deal would be more exciting for everyone."
While plenty of Americans are fed up with the woke erasure of tradition, using presidential leverage to meddle in an NFL team’s branding crosses a line. There’s a difference between criticizing cancel culture and turning a personal grievance into a matter of federal policy, and Trump, in this case, may be going too far.
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Trump has had a hugely successful second term so far, and he’s managed to get a lot done really quickly, but despite that unprecedented success, I think he has bigger fish to fry than making an issue out of a professional football team's name.
The facts support Trump's broader argument. The 2020 name change wasn't driven by genuine Native American outrage but by corporate sponsors fleeing a manufactured controversy during the height of racial hysteria. The original logo, designed to honor Blackfeet Chief John Two Guns White Calf, had actual tribal backing. The Blackfeet tribal chairman and council have since endorsed bringing back the imagery, viewing it as a tribute rather than an insult. Over 150,000 fans have petitioned for the name's return, and a 2024 Washington Post poll showed 58% of local fans prefer "Redskins" over the generic "Commanders" rebrand.
Trump is absolutely right about the deeper cultural rot at play here. The Redskins name wasn’t abandoned because fans or local communities demanded change; it was sacrificed on the altar of corporate cowardice, a knee-jerk surrender to white liberal outrage mobs and overpaid consultants desperate to avoid controversy. Decades of tradition were tossed aside, not out of principle, but out of fear.
But even so, using the power of the presidency to strong-arm a private franchise into rebranding should give real conservatives pause. Everything Trump says about the “Commanders” name being a bland, focus-grouped embarrassment is true, but if the Redskins name is going to return, it should be because the fans demand it and the market rewards it, not because the White House made it a condition for a stadium deal.
