Andrew Giuliani, head of the White House FIFA Task Force, was asked about the political and diplomatic implications of the 2026 World Cup outside the White House on Tuesday.
00:00Do you expect the World Cup to be a deep event in terms of sports diplomacy?
00:05How many foreign leaders do you expect to be president Trump and president Putin coming up possibly coming up without a day?
00:12Can you speak about this election?
00:14Yeah, well, you'll have 48 countries come here.
00:17So I expect the world leaders of those 48 countries to come maybe to their opening games, depending on it.
00:23Obviously, there's a lot that will happen over the next 289 days from a geopolitical standpoint that will probably affect some of that.
00:33But we know that the best way to describe the World Cup final is a Super Bowl going on in New Jersey while you have the ball drop going on in Times Square,
00:43while you have the U.N. General Assembly going on in the rest of New York City.
00:47And by the way, that's just one of the 104 games going on throughout this tournament.
00:51So when President Trump talks about how this is the largest sporting event in the history of mankind, this really is.
00:58When you think it's the first time that three countries have hosted this, that you'll have 104 teams for perspective.
01:04130 million people watch a Super Bowl.
01:07Two billion will watch this World Cup final.
01:09It's the largest sporting event really ever imagined.
01:11To follow up on the Putin question, President Trump seems to open the door to using the World Cup as leverage in his other geopolitical negotiations.
01:21Can you bring us, you know, behind the scenes into, if that's a possibility, or if there are other countries like Iran, Brazil, where this could happen with foreign leaders?
01:31Well, we know soccer is so important to, you know, so many countries all around the world.
01:37You can just see that with those numbers.
01:38And the President knows that better than anybody.
01:41And I think he's willing to utilize whatever he has to to actually create peace around the world.
01:46And many times it's sports, sports diplomacy, that is a great opportunity for maybe foreign leaders who might not see other things eye to eye to eye to actually sit down and do that.
01:57So I think the President realizes that this is a great opportunity to get the world together here.
02:02And hopefully, by the time we have the World Cup kicking off on June 11th of next year, hopefully we'll have some of these foreign wars solved.
02:09I can tell you that, as you can see, we're here in August in Washington, D.C.
02:13Prior administrations were not here in August in Washington, D.C.
02:16President Trump is spending every single waking minute trying to do everything he possibly can to not just make America great again,
02:23but to make this world a safer and better place for our kids and grandkids.
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