Trump loves making deals.
Trump loves shiny things and status symbols and spectacle.
So does his buddy, FIFA president Giovanni Infantino. Having supported the president’s failed bid for a Nobel peace prize, Infantino today presented Trump with the inaugural FIFA peace prize—for someone who has undertaken “exceptional and extraordinary actions for peace and by doing so have united people across the world”—during a tacky and nonsensical spectacle at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Oh, and he also secured a sweetheart “zero-dollar” arrangement with the center for today’s 2026 FIFA World Cup draw, ahead of the tournament playing out next summer across host cities in Canada, Mexico and the United States.
(A leaked copy of the FIFA contract revealed the free-for-all, sparking outrage. Kennedy Center spokeswoman Roma Daravi later said the deal included a $2.4 million donation and “sponsorship opportunities” valued at $5 million. No further details regarding these “opportunities” have been provided.)
Having earlier this year become chairman of the board—that is, naming himself to the position after dismissing all the Biden appointees—Trump had no qualms giving FIFA exclusive use of the Center’s Concert Hall, its largest venue, for the draw. In fact, he is basically allowing FIFA to take over the prestigious arts center for the week. This kind of wholesale handover has never been seen before in the history of the Kennedy Center, which the president yesterday referred to as the “Trump Kennedy Center.”
Won’t someone give him a red card?
The Concert Hall, which seats 2,465, has been re-purposed for the main event, with the Eisenhower Theatre serving as an overflow hall. FIFA has also reserved the Roof Terrace Restaurant for a “VVIP” dinner, and a reception event last night held in the 630-foot long Grand Foyer.
There’s more: FIFA team seminars in the Terrace Theatre, along with a broadcast compound and a media center. A “green carpet” will welcome arrivals; a lucky few will have access to a “legends lounge,” presumably soccer greats and sports admirers from the Trump world granted access to the inner sanctum.
It’s all a glaring example of everything wrong with the way Trump does business and curries favors. As he defends fatal strikes on boats in the Caribbean that his administration had suspected of transporting drugs, he pardoned the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, serving a 45-year sentence in a West Virginia federal prison for cocaine trafficking. (Hernandez had once vowed to “stuff drugs up the nose of every gringo.”)
He has repeated worsening slurs against immigrant populations in the United States and upped the ante on his mass deportation efforts while falsely claiming the Biden administration did no vetting on visa or asylum applicants—just let everybody in. Yet he’s turned over the Kennedy Center to FIFA, which is already advertising in South America with a pitch that buying a World Cup ticket gets you a travel visa to the United States, as a close friend who is an ardent soccer fan and has a home in Colombia recounted to me.
The administration has since clarified the arrangement, saying World Cup ticket buyers will be given priority for visa processing; not a free pass but a leg up for those who can afford it. There are no apparent guardrails attached—even for an organization under fire for ticket prices far out of reach for ordinary fans.
Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, an ex officio member of the Kennedy Center’s board and the ranking member on the Environment and Public Works (EPW) committee, which oversees all public buildings owned by the government, last month launched a “cronyism and corruption” investigation into the center’s management under former ambassador to Germany Ric Grenell, a Trump favorite.
Whitehouse has demanded cost estimates that show the impact on Kennedy Center scheduling to accommodate FIFA, and wants Grenell to explain whether the nonsensical peace prize and its likely recipient factored into the partnership with FIFA.
He asserts that contracts and invoices the EPW committee has gathered reveal the center is being used as “a playground for the President of the United States and his allies,” and that it is “being looted to the tune of millions of dollars… an unprecedented pattern of self-dealing, favoritism and waste.” The FIFA event alone amounts to more than $5 million in losses, Whitehouse alleges, amid broader reputational suffering and declining sales.
Grenell has dismissed the allegations, saying they were based on “inaccurate gossip” furnished by “partisan reporters. And given Democrats’ minority in the Senate, Whitehouse has no power to subpoena documents that could prove his case, or take his investigation to the next level.
So for now, it looks like FIFA is the big winner, scoring lots of prestige pretty much cost-free. Trump is a winner, too. He gets a trophy without having to snatch it up from post-game celebrations, and he gets to wheel and deal access to one of the world’s biggest sports events. But he’s also scoring an own goal, because the reputational damage to the Kennedy Center—a world-famous venue for the arts—is serious. It has now been reduced to another crassly branded saloon.
