Corruption With a Smile: Trump Overturns the Red Card, Infantino Calls It the Greatest Event in Human History

There were 104 matches in this tournament, goals from 30 yards out, and a host nation that got knocked out. But when Donald Trump stood in Trump Tower on Friday looking back at the tournament's biggest moments, the one he picked was a disciplinary decision. Not a goal. A card. The president of the host country, now 80 years old and speaking 2 days before the final between Spain and Argentina, remembered one thing above everything else: the moment a referee made a decision he didn't like.

The story itself doesn't take long to tell. On July 1, U.S. striker Folarin Balogun stepped on the ankle of a Bosnia and Herzegovina defender and was shown a red card. That automatically meant a one match suspension, and that match happened to be the Round of 16 against Belgium. On July 5, FIFA's Disciplinary Committee unexpectedly suspended the suspension. Between those 2 dates was a phone call. Trump has never denied making it. In fact, he carries it around like a trophy. "When they gave this guy," he began on Friday, "is that a red card?" The man who got the governing body's disciplinary ruling overturned with a phone call couldn't even remember the name of the card. He said he had been forced to call Gianni and simply make a recommendation. Then he corrected himself. No, that wasn't what he had said. He had told him he wanted to lodge a complaint. And then came the innocence of a man who never notices the punchline of his own joke: he said he had no idea what would happen after that. Standing beside him, Gianni Infantino smiled.

"Beyond pathetic." FIFA President Infantino to Trump: "You don't need people to compliment you, but this World Cup would never have been such an incredible success without you. It is the greatest social and cultural event in human history that mankind has ever witnessed."

This is where it's worth looking at the English, because the president gave himself away without realizing it. In English, you file a complaint or you lodge a complaint. Trump used neither. He said he wanted to "wage a complaint," using the same verb normally reserved for war. You wage war. You don't wage a complaint. The slip was more honest than the sentence he tried to replace it with.

It's worth lingering on that smile. It's the smile of a man representing an institution whose own rulebook is being turned into a punchline right in front of him, and he nods along. He could have clenched his jaw. Instead, he smiled.

"Unforgettable moments. Probably the most unforgettable was when they gave the red card. I was forced to call Gianni and just make a recommendation."

Then came the sentence that makes the entire event collapse under its own weight. In the end, Trump said, everything worked out much better because now there was no controversy anymore. They had won the match, and the team had all of its players available. Except they didn't win. They lost 4 to 1. Belgium knocked the host nation out of its own tournament, with Balogun on the field. So the president stood inside his own skyscraper, turned elimination into victory, and declared that all controversy had disappeared.

He immediately supplied the logic behind it. Imagine, he said, if Gianni hadn't allowed the player to participate and the team had lost. Everyone would now be saying they would have won if their best player had been available. Gianni had once again made one of his many great decisions, and he would never receive the credit he deserved. It's a remarkable chain of reasoning. It begins with a real loss, moves through an imaginary loss, and ends by praising the official who bent the rules so the real loss could happen.

Trump had already removed any doubt about who deserved the credit on July 6 during an event promoting his children's savings account program. He said he was the one who got them to do it, not Biden. If they had kept a star player out of the match, he said, there would have been a huge stain on the tournament, and he had simply passed along that feeling. Besides, he added, it wasn't even a foul.

Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote the sentence that explains all of this back in 1762. The strongest, he wrote, is never strong enough to remain master forever unless he transforms strength into law and obedience into duty. That transformation is exactly what happened here, and it even has a name: recommendation. A recommendation can supposedly be accepted or rejected. The president recommends. The federation obeys. And because everyone keeps calling it a recommendation, nobody gave an order and nobody obeyed. It's power's most elegant trick: not exercising force, but simply renaming it.

The federation even put that renaming in writing. On July 6, Infantino reminded everyone of what he called a core principle of FIFA governance. The judicial bodies, he said, are independent. They operate autonomously and decide solely under the disciplinary code and the facts of each individual case. Read that beside the president's statement that he was the one who got them to do it. One of those 2 men is lying, and the other one smiled through it inside Trump Tower.

"If Gianni hadn't allowed Balogun to play, we would have said, 'We would have won the game if we had our best player.' Gianni made a good decision." 🤣 🤣 🤣 USA - Belgium: 1 - 4

That phone call should not be mistaken for the beginning of a relationship. The connection between the president and the FIFA president goes back much further, and until now it has always flowed in the same direction. Infantino has been accommodating this man's wishes for years, long before a red card ever required a phone call. That's why the call never needed to include a threat. Between 2 people who know each other well, a request is enough.

The rest of Europe reacted far less diplomatically. UEFA called the decision unprecedented, incomprehensible, and impossible to justify. Belgium head coach Rudi Garcia initially thought it was a joke, while the Belgian federation announced it would explore every available legal option. One geopolitical analyst summed up the position of the American team on social media perfectly. They could only lose. If they beat Belgium, the victory would be tainted because their own president had to cheat for them. If they lost, then not even the cheating had been enough. Reality chose the second option.

Ironically, the most honest person in the entire affair was the player himself. Balogun told an American television network that his first reaction had simply been happiness. He was glad to be back. But after thinking about it, he realized it would become a huge controversy, and he could almost sense a certain nervousness among his teammates because something like this had never happened before. A striker understood within a matter of days what a FIFA president refused to understand after 10 years in office: handing someone a free place back into the lineup damages the entire team.

There have been consequences, just not for the man who made the phone call. A formal complaint has now been filed against Infantino with the International Olympic Committee, alleging violations of political neutrality rules. The old order of responsibility remains intact. The president recommends. The official pays the price.

The rest of what Trump said completed the picture. This World Cup, he declared, had exceeded every expectation. America had brought the world together, everyone was enjoying the game, and it was all filled with happiness and joy. He even managed to mention peace, during a summer in which masked agents from his own administration have been dragging people out of their homes. Then he informed the assembled world of soccer that the next World Cup could just as easily be hosted without Mexico and Canada, the very 2 countries currently co hosting this tournament with the United States. And finally, as always, he circled back to the supposed election fraud of 2020, something for which no evidence has ever been produced. A reception celebrating world soccer somehow ended up back at 2020.

On Sunday, that same man will sit inside MetLife Stadium in New Jersey and personally hand the trophy to the winner of the final. The cameras will capture the moment, the image will circle the globe, and nobody looking at it will be able to see what actually happened during this tournament. A referee made a decision. A president made a phone call. And the decision disappeared.

In the end, though, it wasn't the president who delivered the closing line on Friday. It was Infantino. Turning to Trump, he declared that this World Cup would never have become such a success without him. He called it the greatest human, social, and cultural event mankind has ever witnessed. He said that to the very man who had just spent several minutes proudly describing how he had pushed the federation's own rulebook aside with a phone call. Rousseau would not have needed another sentence. By then, the transformation was already complete. Strength had become law, and obedience no longer even carried the name obedience.

It was now called gratitude. Around here, we call it something else: this investigation is only just getting started.