Pro athletes are loving the ‘Trump dance’

There’s a trend on the sports field: famous athletes are hitting the “Trump dance” in celebration of their in-competition achievements. If you’ve watched one of his rallies this cycle, you’ll know the exact dance move I’m talking about. Trump moves his hips back and forth while punching his arms forward. Sometimes he finishes with a golf swing. It’s very middle- to late-aged white man at a family wedding, which feels totally authentic, is easy to emulate and is a lot fun. In just the past few days, we’ve seen it done by members of the San Francisco 49ers, including confirmed Trump supporter Nick Bosa, the Detroit Lions, the Las Vegas Raiders, the Tennessee Titans, UFC fighter Jon Jones, US Men’s Soccer forward Christian Pulisic and British golfer Charley Hull.

Most of the players who were asked about the celebratory dance emphasized that their choice to do it wasn’t about politics; it was about having fun and enjoying the moment. “I saw everyone doing it yesterday in the NFL, I saw Jon Jones do it, and we were just having a bit of fun. I thought it was a pretty fun dance,” Pulisic said. Bosa affirmed, “All the guys wanted me to do it. I wasn’t even going to do it, but the boys reminded me. And it was fun.”  

There’s been a ton of bellyaching from the left about how conservatives aren’t allowed to celebrate athletes doing the Trump dance because we didn’t like it when Colin Kaepernick kneeled during the National Anthem or LeBron James insisted black men were being hunted down in this country. Well, you reap what you sow. Sports are political now, if the “Black Lives Matter” paint jobs in NFL end-zones and bans on anti-China signs at basketball games were any clue — so it’s fair game for conservatives to want their views represented in the cultural behemoth that is American sports. Turnabout is fair play.

More importantly, though, this is an indication that Trump has now been fully normalized. This isn’t 2016 when even following a Trump surrogate on Instagram could ruin your career and thus millions of people quietly supported the president in the shadows. Trump and the MAGA movement more broadly has broken through the legacy media’s fear-mongering. This is thanks in part to the media’s comprehensive self-disqualification as truth tellers during the first Trump administration and the pandemic, as well as the broad mandate Trump got to govern two weeks ago. It’s OK, and even cool now, to mimic the president. It doesn’t have to mean you support everything about him, but it’s a sign of a healthy culture when people can do things slightly adjacent to politics without being canceled.

Democrats double down on trans activism

The Democratic Party is refusing to abandon “woke” cultural issues after getting smoked in the election two weeks ago, even as some members of the party acknowledged that their position on issues like transgenderism, critical race theory, et cetera, are hugely unpopular with voters. Surveys of swing voters found that one of the most influential ads they saw during the election was a pro-Trump ad about Kamala’s past support for taxpayer-funded sex change operations for prisoners and illegal immigrants with the slogan, “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

Massachusetts congressman Seth Moulton, who previously voted for the Equality Act, said that, as a dad, he thinks it should be common sense that boys don’t play in girls’ sports. He warned his party that this was a losing issue for them. The Salem Democrats from his home district immediately called for him to resign from Congress and hosted protests outside of his office back in Massachusetts. Several members of his staff resigned, as well. So much for introspection.

This week, Representative Nancy Mace, a sexual assault survivor, drew fire for not wanting to share bathrooms with biological men in her workplace. Notably, Sarah McBride, who was born Tim, was just elected as the first transgender member of Congress. Democrats are complaining that Mace’s resolution to limit women’s bathrooms to, well, women, is “bullying” and “targeting” McBride. But apparently it’s not bullying for McBride to force women to affirm his delusions and forego their private, single-sex spaces so that he can feel comfortable alongside their discomfort.

Democrats have totally lost the plot on this issue and have decided to sacrifice women on the altar of the marginalized. But there are a hell of a lot more common-sense voters than there are oppressed identity groups looking for a champion for their niche cause.

If you need further evidence that cultural issues will be the death of the Democrats, take a look at trend lines of support for gay marriage. Political science professor Ryan Burge notes that approval for same-sex marriage stopped increasing around 2022:

In 2018 it was 68 percent. In twelve years the share of the public who favored same sex marriage rose thirty-three points. That’s insanely fast in public opinion. 

But check this out. 

Share in favor in 2021: 64 percent

Share in favor in 2022: 67 percent

Yeah, that progress has stalled out. Maybe even reversed itself a bit.

Could that be because conservatives were right when they warned that enshrining same-sex marriage into federal law would be a slippery slope? It didn’t take long for polyamory to be championed in the New York Times or for medical associations to start recommending medical transitions for children struggling with gender dysphoria. Regardless of how you feel about gay marriage, the support for it flattening out suggests the American people are tapped out on all of this so-called “progress.”

That doesn’t bode well for what was supposed to be Vice President Kamala Harris’s so-called party of the “future.”