{"id":395734,"date":"2026-07-12T16:33:07","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T16:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/395734\/"},"modified":"2026-07-12T16:33:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T16:33:07","slug":"trump-backs-birthright-soccer-player-whose-citizenship-he-opposed-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/395734\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump backs birthright soccer player whose citizenship he opposed \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Re \u201cFolarin Balogun\u2019s red card may be unfair, but FIFA\u2019s decision to lift his suspension might be worse\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sandiegouniontribune.com\/2026\/07\/05\/mark-zeigler-folarin-baloguns-red-card-may-be-unfair-but-fifas-decision-to-lift-his-suspension-might-be-worse\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">July 5<\/a>):\u00a0Trump\u2019s recent meddling with FIFA leadership is particularly bittersweet vis-a-vis his executive order to abolish birthright citizenship shortly after he was sworn into office for a second term.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s sweet because Folarin Balogun was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., to Yoruba Nigerian parents, who moved to London just two months later. But it\u2019s bitter because Balogun is a U.S. citizen solely because of his birthright citizenship \u2014 which President Trump deplores. Without such citizenship Balogun would be playing either for Nigeria or England.<\/p>\n<p>While discussing the incident, Trump asserted his own athletic bona fides, stating, \u201cI\u2019m a person that loves sports and was a good athlete, and I understand sports really well.\u201d Funny, but what does that have to do with anything, except Trump\u2019s ego?<\/p>\n<p>Go figure!<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Emery J. Cummins, San Diego<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Re \u201cFolarin Balogun\u2019s red card may be unfair, but FIFA\u2019s decision to lift his suspension might be worse\u201d&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1564,975,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-395734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-letters-to-the-editor","tag-opinion","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}