Kiké and Mookie are true leaders, standing on principle not attending a photo op at the White House next week
Very few people think it’s a good idea for the Dodgers to visit Donald Trump at the White House on July 23 to celebrate their 2025 World Series title.
A championship visit is presented as a ceremony rather than politics, but standing beside a 34-time felon and admitted offender, who just this week had to pay a woman he assaulted close to $6 million, is a terrible look.
Worse, smiling for photographs and handing a war criminal a personalized jersey tarnishes the team, the championship, and the city’s relationship with its fans.
The Dodgers do not owe Trump a damn thing. They owe their attention and loyalty to the people of L.A., who continue to break attendance records at Chavez Ravine while dripping in their merch, spinning those turnstiles despite expensive tickets, and forking over fortunes for parking and food.
Yes, the Dodgers went to Trump’s tainted White House in 2025 after winning the 2024 title. But at some point, it’s good to pivot from bad choices.
Champions learn when to make adjustments when things have gone awry. Trump’s relationship with L.A. was never good, but it couldn’t be worse now.
The Palisades and Eaton fires devastated communities here in L.A. California officials have requested approximately $33.9 billion in long-term federal disaster assistance for housing, infrastructure, businesses, and public recovery, but the Trump administration is playing games with that money, refusing to make the request to Congress 18 months after the fires.
Trump’s June 2026 budget request also omitted the requested Los Angeles wildfire relief. The twice-impeached president has a pattern of blocking FEMA funds from reaching so-called blue states as a form of punishment for not voting for him.
But families waiting to rebuild come from many political parties, and never before this administration has disaster relief been withheld for such reasons.
The Dodgers could do the courageous thing and say, “We’ll delay our visit to the Oval Office until the president releases the fire relief aid to Angelenos that is long overdue.” That is how leaders operate: with bravery, leverage, and the public shaming of shameful people.
Trump has never apologized for turning DTLA into a testing ground for militarized immigration enforcement in June 2025, when he performatively federalized and deployed thousands of National Guard members and ordered approximately 700 Marines into L.A. as ICE raids and protests intensified.
When California Senator Alex Padilla, in the middle of a press conference he was invited to, tried to ask a question of then–Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, he was escorted into the hallway, forced to the ground, and detained.
Trump’s ignorant and racist response to the incident was to defend the agents by saying the senator “looked like an illegal.”
Trump doubled down by adding, “If you are famous, that would obviously put you in a different category, and ICE agents would not have tackled you.”
So it’s no wonder Kiké Hernández and Mookie Betts are sitting out this trip to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
ICE in L.A. has continued to harass people of color, many of whom are American citizens or legally documented men and women, by stopping them, restraining them, or detaining them.
A 79-year-old naturalized citizen said that federal agents tackled and injured him at his Van Nuys car wash, held him for 12 hours and eventually released him reluctantly without charges.
Other Californians have said that they were shackled, abused and/or imprisoned even after telling agents they were Americans.
One of the first to get national recognition was George Retes, a disabled US veteran going to work in Oxnard who was trapped in his car, tear gassed, pepper sprayed, & detained for three days.
Trump has offered no apology to citizens improperly swept up in immigration enforcement, in fact his stooges like Noem continued to lie and claim no American has ever been arrested or detained by ICE.
“If I do go, people are gonna hate me,” Betts said about using his off day to spend with his family instead of at the White House.
“If I don’t, people are gonna hate me. So instead of trying to make everyone else happy, I’m gonna think about myself and my family.”
The Dodgers would do well by following the lead of the MVP. Let Trump wait for them. Let the platters of Big Macs and fries get cold.
And when they leave the felon hanging by not arriving, they shouldn’t apologize.
Until he does.