In the months leading up to the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the expectation from many European soccer fans and left-wing media pundits was that the tournament would be a disaster.
Fans from around the world wouldn’t want to visit the United States under President Donald Trump, they said. The stadiums in the US supposedly lacked the atmosphere of European venues, they argued. And logistics would be a nightmare, somehow, also because of Trump. Or something.
Fast forward to the late-June, the group stage has been completed, and the tournament has been widely acknowledged as an unmitigated success.
Fanbases from around the world, like Scotland and Norway, have taken over baseball games. Fans from The Netherlands have paraded down city streets. One German fan became an internet sensation after traveling around the South, enjoying American small town hospitality. He wound up being invited backstage to meet Ella Langley at a recent concert. England fans met with President Trump.
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Turns out, fans still came to visit the US after all.
In fact, through just the group stage games, FIFA recently announced that the 2026 World Cup has already obliterated the previous attendance record. More than 4.6 million fans have gone to a game in the US, Mexico and Canada, exceeding the previous record of 3.5 million. Which was also set when the US hosted in 1994.
By any measure, this year’s tournament has been a tremendous success. And Democrats are extremely unhappy about it.
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Politico reported recently that the left has been forced to “grapple uncomfortably” with how well the World Cup has gone.
“I think that there was a little bit of like liberal wishcasting that this would maybe be a disaster to sort of stick it to Trump,” Rob Flaherty, digital Democratic strategist, told Politico. “It hasn’t yet been.”
Incredible. Democrats are so broken by politics they actually specifically hoped that the tournament would be a failure in order to criticize Donald Trump. Now that it hasn’t been, they’re devastated.
Rep. Brendan Boyle, a Democrat from Philadelphia, admitted the tournament had been a “remarkable success,” and a “great moment. He also told Politico, “I’m excited about the U.S. hosting the World Cup, how well that it has gone, how receptive these foreign fan bases have been to finding out more about the United States and interacting with ordinary Americans.”
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But even admitting that, he couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge the Trump administration had helped ensure this outcome.
“Let me be clear, my comments are irrespective of the Trump administration,” he continued. “Frankly, his immigration policies for the last year and a half did scare some people off from coming to the United States.”
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Sure. Which is why venue after venue has been full of fans from around the world and social media is overrun with Europeans, fans from Japan, and South America talking about how much they’ve enjoyed visiting the country and meeting the people.
But this is the modern left; incapable of accepting when Trump does something well. Unhappy when things aren’t a “disaster,” hopeful they can pin that disaster on the right. Unfortunately for them, the World Cup has been outstanding. And there’s weeks worth of games left.