The US lost to Belgium 4-1 and went home. That's the result no amount of White House lobbying can change — but Andrew Giuliani is still at the podium, defending every bit of it.
Giuliani, head of the White House's World Cup taskforce and son of former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, told reporters at the Foreign Press Center in Washington DC this week that the Trump administration was right to push FIFA to overturn Folarin Balogun's red card suspension ahead of Monday's Belgium game. The appeal succeeded. Balogun played. The US lost anyway, by three goals.
The referee argument doesn't hold up well under scrutiny
The White House's case rested heavily on Brazilian referee Raphael Claus having appeared before a Brazilian senate match-fixing investigation in 2024. Trump called him "a little bit suspect." Giuliani went further, citing "irregular red cards" and claiming the VAR process was misapplied — contact fouls, he argued, cannot be reviewed in slow motion.
When a Brazilian journalist pointed out that Claus was a witness in that investigation, not a target, Giuliani adjusted: "He was not accused of crimes. We understand that." That's a significant walk-back from the insinuation Trump had floated publicly. FIFA backed Claus directly, calling his career a demonstration of "the highest standards of professionalism and integrity." The Brazilian Football Confederation said the same.
Whether the red card was harsh is a legitimate debate. Whether it justified the sitting US president publicly casting doubt on a referee's integrity before a World Cup knockout game is a different question entirely — and critics argued it fired up Belgium and burned through the goodwill the US had built as host nation. Belgium celebrated their dressing room victory by parodying Trump's YMCA dance. You can't say they weren't motivated.
Off the pitch, some numbers worth taking seriously
The controversy has somewhat overshadowed what is, by the raw metrics, a tournament with few logistical precedents. Over 6.5 million fans have already attended matches — nearly double the 3.5 million record set at the 1994 World Cup, also in the US. FIFA received more than 500 million ticket requests for 7 million available tickets. The Argentina vs Cape Verde match drew an estimated 2.7 billion viewers worldwide. The US opener against Paraguay pulled 1.3 billion.
Giuliani also addressed criticism over Iran's team being based in Tijuana rather than on US soil, comparing their cross-border travel to NFL teams taking late-night flights after road games. The analogy will do little to satisfy those who saw it as a politically motivated inconvenience — but the practicalities, at least, were defended with specifics: 27-minute flight times, two days of early entry granted for the Seattle match.
- 1,487 drone detections inside temporary flight restriction zones since the tournament began
- 646 drone seizures and 13 arrests by DHS and FBI
- Visa wait times in Buenos Aires cut from 300 days to under two weeks; in Brazil from 600+ days to under a month
- 4,547 tickets per match distributed to US military veterans
With eight matches left and the US already eliminated, the tournament rolls on without its host nation. The betting markets for the remaining contenders just got a little cleaner — no home crowd factor to weigh, no political noise around a potential US run to the final. Just football.
"Soccer is no longer a future America story," Giuliani said. "It's happening right now." It is. The US just won't be playing any part in what happens next.
