NEED TO KNOW

• President Donald Trump has weighed in once again on the Washington Commanders’ 2020 name change
• Trump told reporters this week that, if it were up to him, he would change the name back to the Washington Redskins
• The team dropped the “Redskins” moniker in 2020 under public pressure and claims that the name was offensive to Native Americans

President Donald Trump is a longtime football fan and a one-time team owner in the failed USFL. When asked if the NFL’s Washington Commanders should change their name back to the Washington Redskins, he didn’t hold back.

“You want me to make a controversial statement? I would [change it back],” Trump told reporters on Sunday, July 6, per The Hill. “I wouldn’t have changed the name… It doesn’t have the same ring to me.”

Under public pressure during a period of protests and racial unrest in 2020, the NFL team dropped the “Redskins” moniker, which some saw as offensive to Native Americans. They played as the Washington Football Team for two seasons before rebranding as the Commanders in 2022.

“You know, winning can make everything sound good. So if they win, all of a sudden the Commanders sounds good, but I wouldn’t have changed the name,” Trump noted in his remarks to reporters.

The question initially arose when Trump was asked about intervening in the stalled plans for the Commanders’ new stadium. The team is currently in a stalemate with D.C. politicians over a $3.7 billion plan to renovate Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium and move the team back. RFK was the Redskins’ home for 36 seasons, from 1961 through 1996.

“We’ll see what happens,” Trump said. “I’ve been looking at the deal, and I don’t blame them. It’s a very important piece of property, so we’ll see. But if I can help them out, I would.”

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Trump previously weighed in on the Commanders’ name change back in April, when he told reporters that he had spoken to “people of Indian heritage” who didn’t approve of the change.

“The Indians don’t know why these names are being taken off,“ Trump said. “I think it’s degrading to the Indian population, and it’s a great population.”

“I think [Redskins] is a superior name to what they have now and it had heritage behind it, it had something special,” he added.

At the time of the name change, the NFL franchise faced pressure from corporate sponsors like
Nike, FedEx and PepsiCo, who reconsidered their association with the team’s moniker amid increased public tensions.

In June 2020, Fawn Sharp, the President of the National Congress of American Indians, penned a powerful message to the team’s owners and supporters.

“The racial slur can no longer be removed by the complicit, indifferent, tone-deaf ownership of the franchise, because the stain they have fixed onto their own name and enterprises is now permanent,” Sharp wrote at the time. “It’s time for the players to rip down that name like it was a statue of a Confederate general in their locker room.”

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