The 2026 World Cup Is Trump’s Authoritarian Debutante Ball

The Monday event was meant to be a triumph for Infantino, whose obsequiousness knows no bounds. Since taking over the fantastically corrupt governing body of global soccer almost a decade ago, the bald, slippery Swiss-Italian administrator has shown a special knack for sucking up to the autocrats, thugs, and bullies who run World Cup host nations: Russia, Qatar, and now, the United States. Infantino went so far as to move his family to Qatar for the 2022 World Cup, where his standout contribution was a lengthy diatribe that defended the host nation’s long history of human rights abuses by, among other things, detailing the bullying and abuse he suffered as a child due to his red hair and declaring: “Today I feel Qatari. Today I feel Arabic. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel [like] a migrant worker.”

As a speech, it was bizarre, oscillating between incoherence, offense, and profound stupidity. But it succeeded in its ultimate goal, which was to take some of the heat off of the host nation, which had been receiving justifiable global criticism for its treatment of migrant workers, women, homosexuals, and minority groups.

Now that the global media is turning its attention to the Trump administration’s growing list of human rights abuses—and the president’s increasingly bellicose threats to move games away from blue cities, apparently to punish them for their disloyalty—Infantino has attached himself to Trump. For most of the year, Infantino has popped up beside Trump everywhere, allowing him to steal one trophy (FIFA’s Club World Cup trophy, which Chelsea won but currently sits in the Oval Office) and inventing another (the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize) in a blatant, pathetic attempt to satiate the president’s ego. (The latter prize has not been awarded, but Trump is the odds-on favorite given his well-document—and unrequited—desire for a Nobel Peace Prize.)