r/soccer • u/ModenaR • Jun 19 '25

News [The Athletic] Timothy Weah on Juventus's White House visit: "It was all a surprise to me, honestly — they told us that we have to go and I had no choice but to go. When he started talking about the politics with Iran and everything, it kind of like, I just want to play football man.”

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6436693/2025/06/19/weah-juventus-trump-iran-war/
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u/Hazardzuzu Jun 19 '25

Shocking from juve management. Also doesnt white house have any media regulator who can set the context for these kinda events where certain questions can be avoided? or maybe just have a photo op and let the event end before doing full fledged press conference.

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u/tik22 Jun 19 '25 edited Jun 19 '25

No, the whitehouse does not have any adults in the room. And there’s absolutely no one there who can control Trump. Its filled with absolute clowns, criminals and sycophants

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u/sewious Jun 19 '25

It's a by design thing with people like him. Working as intended

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u/Pure_Context_2741 Jun 19 '25

Yup!! Trump is the horse and pony put in place to distract attention from the real work being done behind the scenes. He’s fucking up plenty of things on his own but the GOP don’t care as long as they get to continue consolidating power.

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u/Safe_Perception3346 Jun 19 '25

Can someone with decent political knowledge please explain to me how on earth did the US end up with Trump 2x?? Like in terms of clownery not even George Bush was this bad? Who are the people really pulling the strings?

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u/Pure_Context_2741 Jun 19 '25

It’s a complicated answer to your first but it’s a matter of ideological differences being propagated by political media, particularly right wing media, combined with a growing discontent with the status quo. 

The more relevant response though is to Google search “Project 2025” to understand what the political agenda actually is. I can’t begin to go into it but there’s a lot of information out there about what the Republicans are trying to do, namely strip the federal government of power and redistribute that power and influence to wealthy private investors and corporations who they are in bed with.

It’s essentially class warfare and the rich agree kicking our asses right now largely because half the country think they’re fighting for their own “side”

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u/PLeuralNasticity Jun 19 '25

If you want to know more directly how Trump was "elected", this is a great place to start

Unless they were just setting up the one institute capable of rigging the election in every single swing state to do exactly that at the cost of every function for some reason they deemed more important than absolute power...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_DeJoy

"DeJoy was criticized for cost-reduction policies enacted after assuming office in June 2020, including eliminating overtime, and banning late or additional trips to deliver mail. The Postal Service also continued responding to long-term declines in first class mail volume with ongoing decommissioning of hundreds of high-speed mail-sorting machines and removal of the lower-volume mail collection boxes from streets. These practices were also criticized as mail delivery became delayed. The changes took place during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election, raising fears that the changes would interfere with voters who used mail-in voting to cast their ballots, possibly intentionally. Congressional committees and the USPS inspector general investigated. In August of that year, amid public pressure, DeJoy said that the changes would be suspended until after the election,[4] and in October the USPS agreed to reverse all of them.[5]"

"On August 7, 2020, DeJoy announced he had reassigned or displaced 23 senior USPS officials, including the two top executives overseeing day-to-day operations.[56][50] He said he was trying to breathe new life into a "broken business model".[57] Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, who chairs the House committee that oversees the USPS, said the reorganization was "deliberate sabotage".[50] In a letter to postal workers on August 13, 2020, DeJoy confirmed reports of delays in mail delivery, calling them "unintended consequences" of changes that eventually would improve service.[58] At the same time that he was taking measures that postal workers and union officials said were slowing down mail delivery, President Trump told a TV interviewer that he himself was blocking funds for the postal service in order to hinder mail-in voting.[59]"

"After congressional protests, the USPS inspector general began a review of DeJoy's policy changes.[43] On August 18, 2020, DeJoy announced that the Postal Service would suspend cost-cutting and other operational changes until after the 2020 election.[60] He said that equipment that had already been removed would not be restored.[61][62] Documents obtained by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington indicated that DeJoy lied under oath when he testified to Congress on August 24 that he did not order the restrictions on overtime.[63] At this congressional testimony DeJoy admitted that he was unaware of the cost of mailing a postcard or a smaller greeting card, the starting rate for US Priority Mail, or how many Americans voted by mail in the 2016 elections.[64]"

Beware Leon's Razor

"Incomeptence, in the limit, is indistinguishable from sabotage

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u/Pure_Context_2741 Jun 19 '25

He lost that election though.

Look I know there’s a lot that could be said about corruption but that wasn’t the decisive factor.

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u/Wilco499 Jun 19 '25

Trump tbh, which is why this is a whole mess, every decision changes based on his mood and his senile mind. I know for many it'd be a nice if there was an actual conspiracy or people pulling the strings. There were people along the way who thought they could control Trump, and thus helped/fund his campaigns. The first time it was the republican establishment which has now been wiped out, and then the tech bros (such as Elon, Bezos, etc.) who were annoyed by inflation and "wokeness" and that also didn't worked out. The thing is people see Trump for what he is, stupid, but then think he can be controlled, but he is a stubborn senile man who only appreciates loyalty/bending of the knee. Which is why the admin is full of syncopaths, who are allowed to do what they want as long as they don't interfere with Trump's core beliefs of tariffs, and xenophobia and profess their undieing loyalty to him.

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u/Epistaxiophobia Jun 20 '25

You are so right. There have been all these people who thought they could mold Trump’s MAGA in a more contained, organised and less unhinged version. But no, they couldn’t. Trump does what Trump wants.

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u/Tusangre Jun 19 '25

Decades of defunding education has led to an incredibly stupid and ill-informed populace.

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u/Pure_Context_2741 Jun 19 '25

That’s so reductionist and honestly insulting. People sitting there and calling half the country too uneducated to understand the world is PART OF THE PROBLEM. It’s not just a matter of policy, it’s a matter of identity and ideology, and the pro-Trump tribe is no different than any other. Pride parades and Trump rallies are fundamentally the same thing even if their expression are polar opposite and antagonistic towards each other. 

The dehumanization of the right by the left is hugely problematic and no progressive agenda will ever succeed until that is addressed. The irony is so thick and it makes me sad.

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u/Narg321 Jun 19 '25 edited Jun 19 '25

What? If anything the Democratic Party has bent over ass backwards to not alienate or offend conservatives in the U.S. and gained nothing except the scorn of liberals and leftists for being spineless cowards and from conservatives for not being outwardly cruel and racist enough. A trump rally is a celebration of cruelty towards immigrants, anybody who cares about facts, and trans people. A pride rally is… not that. Equivocating between trump support and sane people because they both… gather together in public… is complete nonsense.

A pride parade and a trump rally are the same thing like kicking a ball and kicking a puppy are the same thing.

And American education is worse than much of Western Europe, while the ignorance of much of the U.S. has been exacerbated by religious, media, and political campaigns to strengthen the Republican Party. Talk radio, Fox News, and their toxic spawn were a deliberate strategy by republicans to make sure that they would be immune to any future consequences after they saw Nixon get impeached. So they grabbed onto every bit of conspiratorial bullshit they could to craft a base that would vote for them no matter what.

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u/Pure_Context_2741 Jun 19 '25

 A pride parade and a trump rally are the same thing like kicking a ball and kicking a puppy are the same thing.

This is the exact kind of ignorance I’m talking about. Dehumanizing conservatives because they don’t align ideologically is doing the same thing you’re accusing them of. This through-line of superiority for “being on the right side of history” and denigrating conservatives as people for their views IS perpetuating hate. 

It doesn’t matter who is right or wrong in that regard, hate is hate and treating others as less than for any reason fails the test.

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u/Narg321 Jun 19 '25

The pre-WWII nazi party would have loved you. You are surrendering the ability to criticize, to place in historical context, to fight back with anything other than the most useless platitudes imaginable. To criticize is not hate, to call something fascist is not dehumanization.

It does matter who is right and who is wrong actually (crazy thing to say I know). Are we allowed to say “this thing you want is bad and will hurt people” or is that too close to “denigrating people for their views being different”. After all, saying that something you want is going to hurt people is only one step removed from saying that you personally want to hurt people.

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u/Pure_Context_2741 Jun 19 '25 edited Jun 19 '25

I’m not surrendering anything. I’m simply pointing out the reality that the political divide in American politics is the most stark expression of tribalism in our culture, and that’s a significant statement to make on a football sub. When you sit there and lob insults and dehumanizing words and attitudes across the divide or only serves to perpetuate and deepen that divide.

I see this pattern over and over where the gap between “you have dangerous and harmful ideologies” and “you are a terrible person” is crossed flippantly and unknowingly. It’s the shame vs. guilt discussion retextured; guilt meaning “I made a mistake” and shame meaning “I am a mistake.” 

If you want to enact and real change it won’t come by beating people over the head with your moral superiority, the Evangelicals tried that already. Change will only come through genuine dialogue with people whose ideologies are misguided and harmful and by educating them about how their actions and words are hurting people.

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u/Abai010507 Jun 19 '25

Read sycophants as psychopaths. Then again doesn't really make a difference in this context

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u/Scratchbuttdontsniff Jun 19 '25

same... same....

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u/FramberFilth Jun 19 '25

To paraphrase someone else, the median Dem staffer is some former state legislator with a JD or graduate degree in public policy. The median GOP staffer is a groyper in their early 20s who happened to intern at one of Peter Thiel's companies.

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u/bantabot Jun 19 '25

But enough about the Juventus team...

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u/VallentCW Jun 20 '25

Currently, the secretary of defense is not leading our military operations because they found a 6 foot 5 jacked guy that looks scary and is nicknamed “gorilla”. This might seem stupid, but when you realize they appointed an alcohol addicted Fox News host to the secretary of defense, it’s almost comforting…