Sports fans around the world now oppose the U.S. thanks to President Donald Trump, screenwriter and actor Adrian Wenner told CNN.
“When I was growing up, in my youth, we were the good guys,” Wenner told CNN’s Laura Coates. “We were the shining city on the hill, we were the bastion of democracy that the world rooted for. And now we’re the bullies. And the world doesn’t like it.”
His comments came during a discussion of Wenner’s column for the Daily Beast this week arguing that America has lost the moral high ground when it comes to politically charged sporting events.
In stark contrast to Jesse Owens’ crushing defeat of Hitler’s racist ideology in the 1936 Berlin Games, or the “Miracle on Ice,” when a scrappy American team brought down the Soviet Union’s “Evil Empire” in 1980, the Americans are now “the new assh---s of the sporting world,” Wenner wrote.
That became evident over the past week as Canadian fans booed the U.S. national anthem throughout the Four Nations Face-Off Tournament in response to Trump threatening annexation and a trade war with Canada—and repeatedly calling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “governor.”
“It turns out you can’t disparage a whole country and tell people you’re going to take over their land and not have some blowback,” Wenner told Coates.
Canada defeated the U.S. 3-2 during the tournament’s championship game on Thursday night in Boston, prompting Trudeau to send a pointed message of revenge to Trump.
Canada’s triumph came amid what Wenner described as a “very much charged” and difficult environment following Trump’s post about the matchup on social media which poured “gasoline on a fire he started.”
“We’ve always been the good guy. We are suddenly the bad guy, and we’ve got a guy in the office who likes being the bad guy,” Wenner said. “So, if you’re going to be the bad guy, you’re going to pay, you’re going to take some flak for it.”
