Trump Botched The Easiest Photo Op Ever
Bulwark Takes
The Bulwark
4.7 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 25 April 2026
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Catherine Rampell and Sarah Matthews take on the botched White House photo op that went viral. Donald Trump hosted the 2025 NCAA champion Georgia Bulldogs women’s tennis team—but puts them in the background and skips their handshake. They break down the optics, the politics, and what it reveals about the “women’s sports” talking point.
Tickets for our Bulwark Live shows in San Diego and LA in May: https://thebulwark.com/events
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hey guys, Catherine Rampel here. I'm the author of The Receipts Newsletter. Welcome back to Bullwork Takes. |
| 0:06.7 | You might have missed it, but there was a moment that went viral this week when the NCAA championship winning athletes visited the White House. |
| 0:14.9 | And I want to talk to my colleague Sarah Matthews about that. Welcome, Sarah. |
| 0:20.0 | I am so excited to talk about this because I could |
| 0:23.2 | not believe this viral moment and what the White House posted. Okay, so one of the teams that visited |
| 0:29.9 | the White House was the University of Georgia women's tennis team. Let's play that. |
| 0:34.5 | Oh, God. tennis team. Let's play that. |
| 0:55.0 | Look at all that. Look at all that circumstance. Okay, so Sarah, what caught your eye when you first saw this? |
| 1:00.0 | I mean, they're there to honor the women's tennis team. |
| 1:05.0 | And in this photo op, they have them all arranged in the back. |
| 1:08.0 | And then in that video, he doesn't even bother to shake their hands, but he shakes the hands of their male coaches. I mean, it's just laughable for this administration that claims to care about women's sports. But then they're like, oh, women, you go in the back. Men, you can be in the front. And we're going to shake your hands only. Yeah, yeah. There's a photo of it, too, that I think is part of the reason this went viral, where you can |
| 1:31.1 | see that all of the men are standing in the front. |
| 1:34.3 | The women are crowded in back on some sort of, I don't know, podium type thing. |
| 1:42.0 | Rizers, yeah, exactly. |
| 1:43.7 | Yeah, it is pretty striking that they have made |
| 1:48.5 | women's sports, they being the mega folks, women's sports like a pivotal issue in campaign after |
| 1:56.8 | campaign after campaign, you know, for all of those single issue women's sports voters out there. |
| 2:03.5 | And yet, this is like a very telling photo. Clearly you're not so interested in women's sports. |
| 2:10.3 | Whatever. Like elsewhere, you have Donald Trump banning trans women from competing through his |
| 2:16.8 | executive order last year. But he says, |
| 2:19.0 | you know, exciting news. This is in a truth social post. Exciting news due to my executive order, |
| 2:25.3 | which I proudly signed yesterday. The NCAA has officially changed their policy of allowing |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Bulwark, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Bulwark and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.