President Trump said he wants to attend Saturday's Alabama-Georgia matchup in Tuscaloosa but won't go if Hurricane Isaias diverts first responders — and the establishment press is acting like the football trip itself is the crisis.
The stakes for ordinary Americans are simple: a Category 1 storm is bearing down on the Gulf Coast, and the president says he'll stay out of the way if it hits. That's the responsible call. But the Associated Press, carried by both the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot and the Chicago Tribune, led with the frame that mixing football and midterms is "unusual" — as if a president attending a game in his own country is somehow suspect behavior.
"Well, hurricane and football? I love Alabama. I gotta go to the game. It'd be awfully hard," Trump told reporters Wednesday. He immediately added the qualifier the press buried: "if there's a hurricane, I don't want to do anything" to pull focus from first responders and law enforcement. "We'll have to see."
Both the Virginian-Pilot and the Tribune ran identical AP copy that called the trip "unusual" and quoted University of Richmond political scientist Dan Palazzolo saying the White House is "trying to raise enthusiasm, particularly among young men" and that Trump "clearly sees sports as a kind of way to connect with a certain part of the base." The wire also noted Trump received both cheers and boos at a late-September game in Knoxville.
What the AP copy did not bury: Trump's sinking approval ratings, what it called "the increasingly unpopular Iran war," and higher gasoline prices — all dropped into a story about a football game. The implication is clear. The press wants readers to see a president wasting time on sports while his agenda drags.
White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers pushed back, calling Trump "the greatest champion of college sports in American history" and noting he has used executive powers and backed congressional efforts to overhaul how the sport is governed.
If Trump attends, it would be his 10th college football game as president since 2017. He is one week into what he said would be 32 days of travel before the Nov. 3 election, with stops planned in Texas, Oklahoma, Ohio, Nebraska, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Kansas, and Alaska.
The AP invoked Richard Nixon's use of football to capture "Midwest, working class values" — apparently unaware that a president connecting with working-class voters through a sport millions watch every Saturday is the most American thing in the book.
The open question: will Isaias make landfall, or will the press keep trying to turn a football Saturday into a scandal?
