From President Trump’s standpoint, a decline in the World Cup’s popularity due to Ronaldo’s absence would not be pleasant, and the same would be true for FIFA's.
For a nation founded on massacres of Native Americans and centuries-long African slave ownership, the lurch towards racism under Trump is not surprising.
The two men—the older one from glitzy Manhattan, the younger upstart from fashionably upmarket Brooklyn—have built formidable fanbases by championing diametrically opposed visions of America.