It’s the oldest trick in the book for anyone needing to get something done when there’s an active toddler or rambunctious puppy around: Give them a toy or a game, or get them to do a task by making them think it’s their idea. The distraction keeps them busy and happy while you get some peace and quiet.
So it is with President Donald Trump’s new “task force” for the Los Angeles Olympics.
But LA28 needs Trump not to gum up the works over the next three years. By letting him think he’s in charge of … something, Games officials could avoid headaches over athlete visas and fan safety while keeping Trump from meddling elsewhere.
‘We are now focused more than ever on delivery (of the Games) and we can’t do this alone. I want to thank President Trump and the entire administration for their support and their partnership as we work to bring these Games home,’ LA28 chairman Casey Wasserman said at the signing, where he doubled down on the flattery by presenting Trump with a set of the medals from the 1984 Games in Los Angeles.
It should embarrass us all that the president of the United States can be so easily played. It should embarrass LA28 that it’s willing to be party to it. Yet here we are.
The LA Games, the first in the United States since the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, is a multi-billion-dollar effort more than a decade in the making. Organizers are painstaking in their planning, from venues to housing to sponsors.
Yet Trump could ruin it all, the proverbial fly in the punchbowl, given his overreaches on immigration and squabbles with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, both Democrats.
Trump picks fights with Bass and Newsom every chance he gets, most notably when he needlessly sent the National Guard into Los Angeles. It’s a certainty he’d grandstand in some similar manner during the Games if he didn’t think it would make him look bad, too.
Olympic athletes and their coaches are supposed to be exempt from Trump’s latest travel ban, while Olympic fans are usually greeted with open arms by host countries. Yet the recent refusal to allow Cuba’s women’s volleyball team and Senegal’s women’s basketball team into the United States, along with ICE agents who target immigrants, as well as citizens and tourists, have raised concerns that Olympic athletes and fans won’t have safe harbor for the Los Angeles Games. If those embarrassing visa problems and the harassment were to be pinned on Trump, however, they’re less likely to occur.
By creating the task force and putting Trump ‘in charge’ of it, LA28 is letting him think he’s an integral part of an event where his only real role should be that of a figurehead. It’s organizers’ way of making sure he has a vested interest in seeing athletes arrive without issue, fans don’t wind up in Alligator Alcatraz and the Los Angeles Games go off without any humiliating sideshows.
This isn’t the stuff of normally functioning democracies, and no one should pretend it is. Los Angeles organizers also should not assume they’ve fully protected the Games from Trump’s tirades and pettiness. Anyone who thinks they’ve won a permanent place in Trump’s good graces should remember how well that worked out for Elon Musk.
Sure enough, Trump was threatening to call in the National Guard and other members of the U.S. military to safeguard the Games before Tuesday’s news conference was even over. Insulting Bass in the process for good measure.
But with so much time and money already invested, this is also the least-worst option for LA28 and the International Olympic Committee.
‘We remain incredibly confident in our ability to deliver the greatest Games ever, and that starts with the support of this administration every step of the way,’ Wasserman said.
And before anyone squawks about canceling the Games or moving them, save your breath. The IOC held two Olympics in the middle of a global pandemic and has done business with plenty of other unsavory leaders. It isn’t going to be dissuaded by Donald Trump’s awful policies or inept handling of global issues.
The IOC and its host cities have made going along to get along an art form. Trump’s task force is just more of the same, a reminder that the price tag for the Games includes more than money.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.