Washington Nationals’ pitcher Sean Doolittle will not visit the White House with his teammates after his team won the World Series. Donald Trump invited the team to celebrate their World Series victory, probably to enjoy some McDonald’s hamberders in the White House.
It’s not too surprising that Doolittle, who was traded to the Washington Nationals in the summer of 2017, didn’t accept the invitation. Trump’s views seem to be antithetical to Doolittle’s.
“There’s a lot of things, policies that I disagree with, but at the end of the day, it has more to do with the divisive rhetoric and the enabling of conspiracy theories and widening the divide in this country,” Doolittle told the Washington Post. “My wife and I stand for inclusion and acceptance, and we’ve done work with refugees, people that come from, you know, the ‘shithole countries,'” he added in reference to the remarks Trump made in 2018 about immigrants coming from Haiti and other African nations.
“At the end of the day, as much as I wanted to be there with my teammates and share that experience with my teammates, I can’t do it,” Doolittle continued. “I just can’t do it.”
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“I feel very strongly about his issues on race relations,” Doolittle went on to say just before he listed the Fair Housing Act, the Central Park Five and Trump’s comments following a white supremacist rally in 2017 that resulted in Heather Heyer’s murder.
Doolittle noted that his wife has two mothers who are very involved in the LGBTQ community.
“I want to show support for them. I think that’s an important part of allyship, and I don’t want to turn my back on them,” Doolittle told the Post. “I have a brother-in-law who has autism, and [Trump] is a guy that mocked a disabled reporter. How would I explain that to him that I hung out with somebody who mocked the way that he talked, or the way that he moves his hands? I can’t get past that stuff.”
This marks the first Nationals player to publicly confirm that he will not attend the White House event, however, as the Post notes, multiple people close to the team said a handful of players are wrestling with the decision.
Winning professional sports teams have traditionally visited the White House but with this “administration” things have been very different. It no longer seems to be an honor to visit the White House since the rise of Donald Trump.
When Donald Trump went to Game 5 of the World Series, he was greeted with boos, jeers, and a “lock him up!” chant from the crowd as “Impeach Trump” banners adorned the massive stadium. Trump is the most divisive “president” this country has witnessed in modern history. The former reality show star is the most disliked “president” in the history of polling. It’s just not worth a free hamberder to be in the company of a scandal-plagued figure such as Donald J. Trump.
“People say you should go because it’s about respecting the office of the president,” Doolittle said. “And I think over the course of his time in office he’s done a lot of things that maybe don’t respect the office.”
Featured image via Political Tribune gallery
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