{"id":9739,"date":"2025-02-17T13:18:28","date_gmt":"2025-02-17T05:18:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=9739"},"modified":"2025-02-17T13:18:33","modified_gmt":"2025-02-17T05:18:33","slug":"trump-takes-a-victory-lap-at-a-rain-splattered-daytona-500","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=9739","title":{"rendered":"Trump takes a victory lap at a rain-splattered Daytona 500"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Trump takes a victory lap at a rain-splattered Daytona 500\u00a9\u00a0Chris Graythen\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY \u2014 The crowd cheered, the cars roared, and President Donald Trump again basked in the pomp and pageantry of one of America\u2019s premier sporting events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last weekend, he was at the Super Bowl<\/a> in New Orleans, relishing the attention at the nation\u2019s most-watched TV event. This Sunday, Trump left his Mar-a-Lago home for a quick trip to the Daytona 500, where he shook hands with drivers before NASCAR\u2019s signature race<\/a> and reveled in applause as fighter jets screamed overhead and some attendees chanted his name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFour-seven, baby!\u201d a man in the crowd yelled as the 47th president exited his limousine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s fantastic. It\u2019s great for the country,\u201d Trump told Fox Sports in a brief interview, explaining why he\u2019d returned to the Daytona 500 on the fifth anniversary of his first visit. He also praised the NASCAR drivers for their skill and speed. \u201cThey have a lot of guts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The race was quickly delayed by rain, with drivers pausing only 11 laps into the 200-lap event, and Trump left before it could resume. But his brief visit up the Florida coastline was the latest celebration for a politician whose second presidency has been received, so far, more favorably than his first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is your favorite president,\u201d Trump told<\/a> the drivers by radio, as the presidential limousine, \u201cThe Beast,\u201d circled the track. \u201cI\u2019m a big fan. I am a really big fan of you people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NASCAR is Trump country, White House officials have said, and Daytona\u2019s famous race is at the heart of it. Volusia County, where the speedway is, voted for Trump over Kamala Harris by a 22-point margin in November. A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll in 2023 found<\/a> that 42 percent of Republicans said they were fans of auto racing, compared with 25 percent of Democrats \u2014 the most significant margin among the nine sports included in the poll.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many people at Sunday\u2019s race had pro-Trump signs, shirts and other paraphernalia, and they whooped in joy as Air Force One flew overhead; several RVs parked in the speedway\u2019s infield flew Trump and American flags side by side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s tour of Daytona\u2019s track also doubled as a kind of victory lap. His polling is at an all-time high, as the White House noted Friday, and his Cabinet<\/a> has been almost entirely confirmed<\/a>. Many Americans are shrugging over Trump\u2019s actions<\/a>, a sentiment echoed at this speedway, even as many steps are provoking anger abroad as well as unease and legal challenges at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asked about Trump\u2019s moves to dismantle federal agencies and abruptly fire thousands of federal workers, Jonathan Vilches, a 38-year-old Trump supporter and NASCAR fan, said he sympathized with the affected workers \u2014 but only to a point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI understand their pain, but understand our pain,\u201d said Vilches, wearing a red Make America Great Again hat and a T-shirt touting driver Joey Logano. Vilches, surrounded by his family as they partied in the speedway\u2019s infield before the race, said he was particularly upset by the Biden administration\u2019s policies to expand protections for transgender people, which he said flouted biblical teachings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor the past four years, you\u2019re telling us God was wrong, that God made a mistake with two genders,\u201d Vilches said, praising Trump for reversing President Joe Biden\u2019s policies as well as for returning to Daytona.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many presidents have been associated with sports. George W. Bush was an owner of a major league baseball team and harbored dreams of being the league\u2019s commissioner<\/a>, while Barack Obama had a pickup basketball game<\/a> that sometimes included NBA players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the 78-year-old Trump has an especially long relationship with professional teams and athletes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He sought to buy the NFL\u2019s Buffalo Bills and succeeded in acquiring a team in the rival U.S. Football League<\/a> more than 40 years ago. He has spent years golfing with legends such as Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus. In his first term, he bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom on baseball Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera, Woods and other famed athletes<\/a>. Eleven days after winning the presidency again in November, Trump and his retinue strode into Madison Square Garden in New York for an Ultimate Fighting Championship event, where the crowd hailed him as a conquering hero<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTrump loves sports in a very specific way \u2014 not because of team loyalties, not because of strategies \u2014 but for the spectacle of it all, for the proximity to power and the spotlight,\u201d David Niven, a University of Cincinnati political scientist, wrote in an email. He called Trump an \u201cAmerican Caligula,\u201d comparing him to the Roman emperor who reveled in staging fights of gladiators, and said the president draped himself in \u201ccartoon fierceness\u201d in his visits to sporting events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStanding aside football players, UFC fighters, race car drivers, he wants their fearlessness to rub off on him,\u201d Niven wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NASCAR has had its moments in Trump\u2019s political story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Five years ago, the president was also at the Daytona 500 \u2014 serving as the race\u2019s grand marshal \u2014 as he eyed reelection, but as his advisers were growing increasingly worried about a new disease named covid-19. Analysts have since said that February 2020 ended up being a lost month<\/a>, with too little preparation for a pandemic that would overwhelm the country a few weeks later and help sweep Trump out of office in November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sport also helped fan the flames of his political rebirth. At a NASCAR event in October 2021, a crowd began chanting derisively about then-President Biden \u2014 which a reporter paraphrased as \u201cLet\u2019s go, Brandon<\/a>.\u201d That led to code for a vulgar phrase to mock the Democratic president that was quickly repeated by MAGA supporters. Now, even some three years later, a \u201cLet\u2019s go, Brandon\u201d flag was spotted flying near the Daytona track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Niven, a former speechwriter for former Ohio governor Ted Strickland (D) and other Democrats, said that Trump picks his spots when visiting sporting events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTrump doesn\u2019t go to sports where he\u2019d be called to account,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThere are no \u2018Trump goes to the NBA championship photo ops\u2019 for a very good reason.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Daytona Beach, locals said they understood why Trump was back at their city\u2019s famous race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe\u2019s \u2018the people\u2019s president,\u2019\u201d said John Nicholson, a 76-year-old retiree who was visiting a library near the speedway, adding that the media had wrongly portrayed Trump. \u201cHe\u2019s been treated very badly.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY \u2014 The crowd cheered, the cars roared, and President Donald Trump again basked in the pomp and pageantry of one of America\u2019s premier sporting events. Last weekend, he was at the Super Bowl in New Orleans, relishing the attention at the nation\u2019s most-watched TV event. This Sunday, Trump left his Mar-a-Lago home for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":9740,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[3112,2364,1724],"class_list":["post-9739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-usa","tag-daytona","tag-takes","tag-trump"],"yoast_head":"\nTrump takes a victory lap at a rain-splattered Daytona 500 - LISTEN WORLD<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=9739\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump takes a victory lap at a rain-splattered Daytona 500 - LISTEN WORLD\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY \u2014 The crowd cheered, the cars roared, and President Donald Trump again basked in the pomp and pageantry of one of America\u2019s premier sporting events. 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