Trump threatens to derail the new agreement of the Washington commanding stadium on the name of the team: NPR
A vision of the Stade Robert F. Kennedy (RFK), disappeared and currently under demolition, in Washington, DC, on April 28, 2025. President Trump threatens to intervene in an agreement for a new stadium.
Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images
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Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images
President Trump threatens to derail a plan to build a new stadium in Washington, DC, for the Washington commanding football team unless the team returns to its name in the previous name.
“The Washington ‘What’s’ should immediately change its name to the Washington Redskins football team,” Trump wrote on his social account Truth. “There is a big complaint for that.”
The football team abandoned the long -standing name in 2020 after many years of criticism that it was racist towards Aboriginal peoples.
Trump also called the Cleveland Guardians baseball team to change their name to the Cleveland Indians. This name change was announced in 2021.
“Our great Indians, in massive numbers, want it to happen,” said Trump, without offering evidence. “Our great Indians, in massive numbers, want this to happen. Their inheritance and their prestige are systematically removed from them.”
Suzan Harjo, member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes who fought for decades to change the name of the team, told NPR in 2022 that the “word R” was linked to racist attitudes which perpetuated “emotional and physical violence” against the Amerindians. “When I was a girl, you could barely go through your young life without being attacked by a bunch of whites-whether boys, girls or men or women. And they are still going to this word,” she said.
In a subsequent position, Trump threatened to scuttle the commanders’ plans for a new stadium, which would move the team from its current location in Maryland to the national capital after renovating an archaic stadium on the federal property.
“I can put a restriction there if they do not change the name in the original” Redskins “, and get rid of the ridiculous nickname,” Washington commanders “, I will not materialize them to build a stadium in Washington,” wrote Trump.
The congress gave control of the city on the site of the new stadium proposed last December, which former president Joe Biden reported in January. The DC council now plans a plan of several billion dollars to redevelop the property of the team. We don’t know how Trump could intervene with the project.
The DC mayor’s office, Muriel Bowser, said in an email that the mayor had no comments. Commanders did not immediately respond to the request for NPR comments. Cleveland Guardians refused to comment.
