In 2017 the sports world was pretty well united in using the White House visit as a pulpit of dissent. In breaking with tradition, no N.B.A. or W.N.B.A. team accepted an invitation from President Trump in his first term. The Oklahoma City Thunder, which won the championship on Sunday night, will be the first N.B.A. team in Mr. Trump’s second term to face the question.
With even higher stakes for the country, championship teams invited to the White House are faced with a question: Will they continue to dissent or get in line?
For more than 60 years at the professional level, the highest collegiate levels, or the Olympics, winning titles or medals has come with a top honor: acknowledgment from the president. The ritual of the post-victory White House visit has existed in one form or another since the end of the Civil War. Calvin Coolidge honored the Washington Senators’ 1924 World Series win. In 1963, John F. Kennedy, the Boston-Irish president, enthusiastically hosted the World Champion Boston Celtics.
What was once an uncomplicated perk — win the title, hoist the trophy, meet the president — is no longer so simple. The first Trump presidency exposed the fractures of a broken country when several players and teams rejected the invitation, using the opportunity to express their feelings for Mr. Trump — and he responded by aiming his ire on them.
Now, in his second term, in a climate of increased volatility and the president going on the offensive against his perceived enemies, the celebratory White House photo op has devolved into another weapon in a weaponized world.
Eight years ago, in 2017, Mr. Trump publicly attacked N.F.L. players who took a knee during the national anthem to protest police violence, insulting them verbally and demanding that team owners kick the dissenting players out of the league. Months later, several members of the Super Bowl-winning Eagles responded to Mr. Trump by rejecting his White House invitation.
Faced with the prospect of an embarrassingly small reception, Mr. Trump rescinded the invitation, making the Eagles the first N.F.L. champions in many years to not appear at the White House. That same year, the N.B.A. champion Golden State Warriors, filled with vocal critics of the administration, were also disinvited by Mr. Trump after one of the players, Stephen Curry, hesitated. For the Warriors’ next championship, the team went to Washington to meet with a president, but it was former President Barack Obama, and not at the White House.
Several N.H.L., M.L.B. and N.F.L. teams agreed to visit the White House during Mr. Trump’s first term. Once Mr. Trump left office, in 2021, the defending N.B.A. champion Milwaukee Bucks and the W.N.B.A. champion Seattle Storm accepted invitations from the White House, as would N.B.A. champions Golden State and Boston.
During Trump 2.0, political divisions between winning teams and the administration have reappeared. The New York Liberty, the reigning W.N.B.A. champions, were not invited to the White House, and three weeks ago — like the 2018 Warriors — instead met with the Obamas. After winning the Super Bowl in February, the Eagles did accept the president’s invitation, but two dozen players, including Super Bowl M.V.P., Jalen Hurts, did not attend the ceremony in April. Mr. Hurts avoided the political jousting, stating that he “wasn’t available.”
The Los Angeles Dodgers, who defeated the Yankees in the World Series last year, ultimately chose to attend the White House celebration in April, but not without incident. Weeks earlier, in its assault on the nation’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, the Department of Defense temporarily deleted the military profile of Jackie Robinson from the department’s website, erasing the service of an Army veteran, a Dodger and the most socially and historically significant baseball player of them all.
Under pressure from fans and punditry to reject Mr. Trump’s invitation as a response to the Robinson incident — and to signal support for the Los Angeles Latino community during a time of hostility toward immigration — the Dodgers nevertheless chose to attend. The team did so under a duress that illustrated the politicizing of a ceremony that is supposed to be a privilege.
In what appeared to be a capitulation to Mr. Trump, the baseball commissioner, Rob Manfred, said nothing about the administration’s insult of Robinson — no meaningful acknowledgment of the man as the game’s greatest symbol of baseball integration, even as Major League Baseball contributes annually to the Jackie Robinson Foundation. Mr. Manfred expressed no public disappointment that the Trump administration would reduce the son of sharecroppers, who wore the uniform in a segregated military during World War II, to an unmerited beneficiary of a D.E.I. handout.
Two months after the Dodgers visited the White House, badgeless Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents appeared in the Dodger Stadium parking lot, requesting access to the stadium grounds (ICE denied this). Under pressure from community activists, the Dodgers refused to participate, and last week they donated $1 million to families impacted by immigration raids.
None of which is to say sports have ever been nonpolitical. The excellence of Jesse Owens in Nazi Germany during the 1936 Berlin Olympics and Robinson’s Dodger debut in 1947 —these historical moments have given athletic excellence its political significance.
The right for players to criticize the president has always been a basic burden of public office, and Mr. Trump is not the first chief executive to be confronted by an athlete. After his team, the Chicago Bulls, won the 1991 N.B.A. title, Craig Hodges appeared at the White House — as a dissenter, wearing a dashiki and passing President George H.W. Bush’s press secretary a note imploring the president to reject policies harmful to Black people. For it, Mr. Hodges was effectively blackballed, Colin Kaepernick-style, from playing in the N.B.A. In 2012, the Boston Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas elected to avoid the Obama White House visit following the Bruins’ first Stanley Cup win since 1972, and in 2021 the Dodgers reliever Blake Treinen turned down President Joe Biden’s invitation following the team’s 2020 World Series win.
Today’s political climate has forced what seems like a starker choice: attend the White House and tacitly condone the president’s policies and behaviors, or boycott and risk public ridicule — Bruce Springsteen- and Taylor Swift-style — for daring to criticize his actions. Seeking neutral ground, Saquon Barkley, the Philadelphia running back, attended the April ceremony, he said, out of respect for the office. Defiantly, Mr. Barkley responded on social media that he played golf with Mr. Obama and looked forward to golfing with Mr. Trump — and was widely criticized for his perceived naïveté.
Yet sometimes dissent works. Considerable anger at the Defense Department’s attempted erasure of Robinson swelled through corridors of M.L.B. clubhouses, the Players Association, millions of fans and much of the rank and file of the commissioner’s office, and the outrage forced the department to retreat, announcing that Robinson’s erasure may have been a “mistake,” and his page was restored.
In addition to running afoul of the president, players risk angering the people who sign their paychecks and control the game, a consideration especially true in baseball and the N.F.L., where several owners contributed to the president’s inauguration fund.
Visiting the White House is something few Americans ever experience. Far fewer will ever shake hands with a sitting president. But in the Trump era, a perk has become a problem as the president is willing to go on the offensive with the immense power of the office behind him.
Mr. Bryant is the author of “The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America and the Politics of Patriotism.”
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