One Thing: How Trump is Using the World Cup to Further His Goals

CNN 5 Things

CNN

Daily News, News

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 30 November 2025

⏱️ 17 minutes

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Summary

The eyes of the international soccer world will be on North America next summer when the FIFA World Cup comes to the US, Mexico and Canada. President Donald Trump has been intimately involved with the planning – going so far as to threaten to move games from cities that don’t cooperate with his policies. Ahead of the tournament draw, we examine what’s behind Trump’s fascination with the tournament and whether international fans will want to come amid stories of detention and deportation. For more: Trump muses about what it would take to strip US World Cup host cities of games just months before the tournament kicks off --- Guest: Don Riddell, CNN World Sport Anchor and Correspondent Host: David Rind Producer: Paola Ortiz Showrunner: Felicia Patinkin Editorial Support: Kyle Feldscher, Jennifer Bernstein Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is one thing. I'm David Rind, and the 2026 World Cup is coming to America with a Trump-sized asterisk.
0:07.8	Some football fans might be thinking twice about coming to the United States, and, you know, I have to pinch myself because I wouldn't have said something like that just, you know, two or three years ago.
0:16.7	Stick around.
0:19.3	We've got a lot of new countries playings, and some of them are wonderful stories.
0:25.6	Curacao, the island nation, have just qualified.
0:29.6	They're a country of about 150,000 people.
0:32.6	I mean, genuine minnows.
0:34.6	Same with Cape Verde.
0:35.6	Absolutely tiny, tiny. Cape Verde. Yeah. I have to admit,
0:39.2	I don't even know where that is. It's off the coast of Africa.
0:45.1	Don Rodel is an anchoring correspondent for CNN World Sport. And when he's not helping me find
0:50.4	my way around a map, he's spending a lot of his time thinking about next summer's
0:54.5	World Cup.
0:55.7	I'm very partial to Scotland.
0:57.8	I was born in Edinburgh.
0:58.8	I know I don't have the accent anymore, but I consider myself to be Scottish.
1:04.2	I was very, very excited the other week when they qualified with a win against Denmark.
1:09.1	They're back in the World Cup for the first time in 28 years. If you haven't heard, the World Cup is coming to America. They'll be playing
1:15.8	matches across the U.S. as well as Mexico and Canada. This is soccer's biggest event, bar none,
1:21.7	only happens every four years. And President Donald Trump has been talking about this a lot in his
1:26.5	second term. In a way, it's like Johnny said it better.
1:29.0	It's like having many Super Bowls for a short period of time.
	...

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