If you haven’t yet come to terms with this month’s catastrophic election results, you may currently be using sports as an escape hatch. This, of course, has always been one of sports’ primary utilities: Whatever your worries and stresses, you can lose yourself in a silly game for a few hours and forget the real world for a while.
And yet the real world has a way of intruding. On Monday night, the United States Men’s National Team beat Jamaica 4-2 in the semifinals of the CONCACAF Nations League semifinals. It was an incredibly fun game — and the perfect way for new team manager Mauricio Pochettino to begin his tenure. It had everything: A raucous St. Louis crowd, one goal each from Tim Weah and Ricardo Pepi, and two from U.S. star Christian Pulisic, who, at 26, is almost certainly already the greatest American soccer player ever. What a night, right? USA! USA!
Except that after Pulisic scored his first goal, he did this:
USMNT Captain Christian Pulisic scored and immediately did the Trump dance 🕺 pic.twitter.com/jMyfvE8T3J
For those not familiar, that’s the “Trump Dance:” a celebration inspired by the lurching, arrythmic movements our president-elect has displayed at his rallies and at Mar-A-Lago for years, often to the tune of YMCA. Over the last two weeks, the Trump Dance has become all the rage among athletes after scoring a goal, reaching the end zone or beating up a guy in an octagon. UFC champion Jon Jones did it (with Trump in attendance), as did........