tony pearce

@bagshaw2112 I think real football fans are so disassociated with this WC due to the fact it’s mainly in the States, hence Trump’s grubby paws over it, plus the repulsive corruption of Infantino and FIFA

teepee61 retweeted

Gandalv

@Microinteracti1

3 days ago

Football, Bombs, and a President Who Loves Inflation: Welcome to the Greatest Show on Earth Today, finally, the FIFA World Cup kicks off across Mexico, Canada and the United States. The biggest sporting event in the history of mankind, hosted by three nations, one of which has spent the past year making sure half the planet can't get a visa to actually attend it. And how does America mark this glorious occasion? With fireworks? A parade? No. By bombing Iran. Again. For the second night in a row. Because nothing welcomes the beautiful game quite like a Tomahawk missile leaving a destroyer at three in the morning. And I know what you're thinking. Surely that's the maddest thing happening in America today. Oh, you sweet summer child. We haven't even started. Because the man presiding over this circus, the President of the United States, stood in the Oval Office this week and was asked whether he was worried that inflation had just hit a three-year high of 4.2 percent. Did he furrow his brow? Did he promise relief for the ordinary American family staring at a grocery bill that looks like a phone number? He did not. He said, and I quote, "No, I love it. I love the inflation." I love the inflation. Let that marinate for a moment. Here is a man who was elected on a sacred promise to make eggs cheap again, gazing upon the most punishing price surge in three years, a surge caused largely by his own war, and declaring his love for it the way a normal person declares love for a labrador puppy. And the truly magnificent part? His fanbase, those great unsharpened butter knives of the American heartland, have now decided that they love inflation too. Of course they have. If the dear leader announced tomorrow that he loved gout, millions of grown adults would be queueing up for it by Friday. What these poor souls don't know, because economics is something that happens to other people, is what's lurking around the next corner. Because central banks have this charming little habit. When inflation runs hot, they don't send you a card. They raise interest rates. Which means the mortgage goes up. The car loan goes up. The credit card goes up. Everything that makes life in America already feel like being slowly mugged in slow motion gets more expensive, all at once. The full set. So congratulations to everyone out there currently loving inflation. You are cheering for the iceberg from the deck of the Titanic, and you've paid extra for the privilege. Meanwhile, the bombs. US Central Command confirmed fresh "self-defense strikes" on multiple targets in Iran, at the direction of the President, who had announced earlier that America would attack for a second night running. Self-defense. The sort of self-defense where you fly hundreds of miles to someone else's country with precision munitions. Defense (war) Secretary Pete Hegseth explained, with the gravitas of a man announcing a barbecue, that "Central Command will be busy tonight because President Trump said we will be hitting Iran hard and we will be." Which brings us to the patron saint of this entire fiasco: Gianni Infantino. The FIFA president and, I'd argue, the most embarrassing clown international sport has ever produced, which given FIFA's back catalogue is like winning an Oscar for corruption at the Cannes Festival. Last December, at the World Cup draw, this grovelling courtier invented an entirely new award, the "FIFA Peace Prize," handed Trump a gold trophy and a medal, and announced "You definitely deserve the first FIFA Peace Prize for your action, for what you have obtained in your way." The whole thing was widely seen as a consolation prize after Trump lost the actual Nobel in October, which Infantino had personally lobbied for him to win. The Norwegians said no, so the head of world football simply built his own Nobel out of cardboard and gold spray paint, like a toddler who loses at Monopoly and invents a new rule where he wins. And now the punchline has arrived, fully formed, gift-wrapped by history itself: Infantino's hand-picked Peace Prize laureate is conducting an active bombing campaign on the opening day of Infantino's own tournament. No man has ever fallen flatter on a prize of his own making. No man ever will again. It is, in its way, a world record, and FIFA does love a world record. And still we're not done. Because The New York Times has just published an enormous exposé titled "Inside the White House Freakout Over the Epstein Files," detailing shouting matches, arguments, attempted firings and clashing strategies, all in service of one doomed mission: making the public forget about Jeffrey Epstein, which Trump could not do no matter what he tried. And the administration's greatest fear wasn't the Democrats. It was their own supporters and influencers. Years spent promising the base a secret list, and now an entire presidency spent in crisis meetings begging that same base to please, please stop asking about the list. So here we are. Football. Bombs. A president professing love for the very inflation he promised to kill. A fanbase loving it right back, blissfully unaware the mortgage hammer is already mid-swing. A fake peace prize melting under the heat of real airstrikes. And a White House in full meltdown over a dead sex offender's filing cabinet. America in the summer of 2026 isn't a country anymore. It's a streaming service. The writing is absurd, the plot makes no sense, every character is unlikeable, and yet four billion of us will be watching anyway. Kick-off is today. God help us all.