When Trump intervened for the U.S. in the World Cup, the team was compromised.  They had to lose because any win would never be seen as “clean”.  The required motivation was lost.  A winning team is about more than skill.  It’s about unity, rules, and respect.

Thomas Friedman writes today on how Trump has fleeced the whole country, especially his own supporters.  Trump takes the Woody Guthrie song, This Land Was Made for You and Me, and makes it: “This land is my land, this land is my land / From California to the New York island / From my cryptocurrency to the Qatari 747 / This land belongs to me and mine.”

He even took over the 250th anniversary celebration to make it about him.  The weather didn’t agree.

Friedman ends his column with Obama’s speech at the opening ceremony of his Presidential center in Chicago. His favorite passage was this:

As algorithms keep feeding us a steady stream of distraction and outrage, as only the loudest, most extreme voices get attention, fanning our prejudices, appealing to our basest, most tribal instincts, it’s tempting to give in to cynicism and even despair, to stop trying. We start thinking that appeals to democracy and civic participation are corny and old-fashioned and boring and naïve, that the very idea of working on behalf of the common good is a sucker’s bet, and that in order for us to win, somebody else has got to lose. I get it. I am not immune to anger or doubt, but I do know this: When we lose faith in each other, when we stop believing that voting matters, that citizenship matters, that our collective voices matter, that how we treat each other no longer matters, and we give away our power to decide our own futures, we open the door to the most ruthless, or the most careless, or the most fearful among us, who see some groups and some people as more equal than others, and see government as nothing more than a way to divvy up the spoils and punish enemies and keep those who are different in their place.

Obama continued, “I do not believe that is the story of America that prevails in the end. … I remain convinced that the overwhelming majority of Americans … aren’t looking for perpetual anger and division. They are looking for fairness and common sense and mutual respect, that deep in our gut we want to find a way to turn toward each other again, not further away.”

Friedman ends his column with this: “So, Democrats, you have your assignment. It’s to not let Trump bait you into blind rage and extreme ideas. He feeds off that. Just focus on how much he has been fleecing all of us while tearing us apart. And how much Democrats intend to pull the whole country together.“

’Cause this land was made for you and me.