President Donald Trump is threatening to scuttle the Washington Commanders’ new Washington, D.C. stadium deal if the team refuses to change its name back to the “Redskins.”
After rebranding the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America earlier this year, the president is now calling for the Washington Commanders and the Cleveland Guardians to revert their names to the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians, respectively.
But his demands for the Commanders comes with a threat: go back to the Redskins, or lose your stadium.
“I may put a restriction on them that if they don’t change the name back to the original ‘Washington Redskins,’ and get rid of the ridiculous moniker, ‘Washington Commanders,’ I won’t make a deal for them to build a Stadium in Washington,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform on Sunday.
The Commanders struck a deal to move back into the nation’s capital after moving to Maryland. The current deal would see the Commanders return with a new stadium in 2030.
The team left the name “Redskins” behind in 2020 after years of pressure from groups complaining that the team was using a racial slur for Native Americans as its name. The team initially went by the “Washington Football Team” until it settled on the Commanders as its new name.
The Indians became the Guardians in 2021 after similar pressure to change the name and the team’s Chief Wahoo logo. The Cleveland Major League Baseball team had been called the Indians since 1915.
On Sunday, Trump went on a Truth Social rant demanding that the teams revert to their original names, claiming that “our great Indian people” want the name changes.
It came as the president is under pressure for his links to Jeffrey Epstein and his administration’s failure to release all the files associated with his case.
“The Washington ‘Whatever’s’ should IMMEDIATELY change their name back to the Washington Redskins Football Team,” Trump wrote. “There is a big clamoring for this. Likewise, the Cleveland Indians, one of the six original baseball teams, with a storied past. Our great Indian people, in massive numbers, want this to happen. Their heritage and prestige is systematically being taken away from them. Times are different now than they were three or four years ago. We are a Country of passion and common sense. OWNERS, GET IT DONE!!!”
In 2020, a University of Michigan/University of California, Berkeley poll given to Native American respondents found that half were offended by the name “Redskins,” and 65 percent said they were offended by the “tomahawk chop” done at sporting events. Even more — 73 percent — said fans doing imitations of Native American dances was offensive.
Despite Trump’s social media tantrum, it does not appear as though the Commanders will be changing their name anytime soon. The team’s owner, Josh Harris, told Fox News back in April that there were no plans to restore the team’s original name.
“The Commanders’ name actually has taken on an amazing kind of element in our building,” Harris told Fox News’ Bret Baier, who asked if the team would revert to its original name as part of its new stadium deal in Washington, D.C. “So, the people that certain types of players that are tough, that love football, are delegated Commanders and Jayden [Daniels], for example, is a Commander, and they’re ranked.”
Harris said that since Washington D.C. is a “military city” the team would be “moving forward with the Commanders name, excited about that, and not looking back.”
There is also no indication that the Guardians are planning a return to the days of “the Tribe.”
The team has long maintained that it took on the name “Indians” to honor Louis Sockalexis, believed to be the first Native American player in major league baseball. Sockalexis played with the Cleveland Spiders in the late 1800s. He died in 1913, and two years later, the then-Cleveland Naps changed their name to the Cleveland Indians, though there is no definitive way to know what the team’s intentions were at the time.
The Guardians’ new name references the art deco “Guardians of Traffic” statues that tower over the Hope Memorial Bridge, which is just outside the team’s stadium in downtown Cleveland.
