The ‘Trump Dance’ has made its way to the sports world. Here’s what it is and who’s doing it.
Soccer star Christian Pulisic, UFC champ Jon Jones, and several NFL players have brought the president-elect's viral dance to the sports world.
Since the presidential election, athletes across multiple leagues have begun celebrating with the “Trump Dance,” an imitation of President-elect Donald Trump’s on-stage dance move from his rallies.
The dance became especially prominent after the Pennsylvania town hall in Oaks in which Trump abruptly stopped answering questions and instead elected to play music and dance with his supporters for the remaining minutes of the event.
What is the ‘Trump Dance?’
Essentially, it’s this:
It has had other, slightly different variations and additions — like when Trump added an imaginary golf swing, something that some of the athletes doing the dance also mimicked.
Who has done the ‘Trump Dance’ as a victory celebration?
Christian Pulisic, a Hershey, Pa., native and U.S. men’s national soccer team star, is one of the latest athletes to do the “Trump Dance,” and one of the only ones to explicitly admit that’s what he was doing.
“Well, obviously that’s the ‘Trump Dance,’” Pulisic said Monday after the national team’s game against Jamaica. “It was just a dance that everyone’s doing. He’s the one who created it. I just thought it was funny.”
Pulisic insisted that “it’s not a political dance.”
Others to do the dance include UFC champion Jon Jones, who did it in the ring in front of Trump himself and pointed to Trump once he finished the dance.
Several NFL players also have used the dance as a celebration, including Raiders tight end Brock Bowers, Titans receiver Calvin Ridley, Lions defensive end Za’Darius Smith, and of course, 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa, who previously was fined for wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat during a postgame interview.
Could the NFL ban the ‘Trump Dance’?
The NFL likes to shy away from controversy, especially after Colin Kaepernick’s decision to kneel during the national anthem sparked a national firestorm, causing many to call to keep politics out of sports.
Bosa was fined earlier in the month for wearing a hat supporting Trump because of an NFL rule preventing players from displaying a personal message or non-sponsored branding “at any point throughout a game day when visible at the stadium and TV audience, including postgame interviews in the locker room or on the field.”
There’s nothing in the NFL rulebook preventing celebrations, so long as they don’t contain “any object as a prop, or possessing any foreign or extraneous object(s) that are not part of the uniform on the field or the sideline during the game.”
So as long as players want to do it, it’s likely to stick around. Some NFL players, including Bosa, have shied away from explicitly stating what the celebration is meant to evoke, potentially to avoid repercussions from the league.
“I think you know the answer to that question,” Bosa said when asked what inspired the dance.