Donald Trump is tackling the biggest issue in Washington: The local NFL team’s 2020 decision to drop ‘Redskins’ in favor of a more politically correct nickname.
Known as the Commanders since 2022, Washington’s football team dropped the controversial moniker fiver years ago amid uproar over the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.
‘The Washington “Whatever’s” should IMMEDIATELY change their name back to the Washington Redskins Football Team,’ Trump wrote on social media before a scheduled round of golf at Trump National Golf Club in Washington D.C. ‘There is a big clamoring for this.’
Daily Mail has reached out to Commanders spokespeople for comment.
While Trump may be slightly off about the team name (they were the ‘Washington Redskins’ and then the ‘Washington Football Team’ but never the ‘Washington Redskins Football Team’), he is right about uproar over the changes.
Fans and even some Native American groups have voiced support for the team’s new ownership group to revert to ‘Redskins.’ Several public opinion polls of self-identified Native Americans have found most were not offended by the term, while critics have pointed to academic research by the University of Michigan and UC Berkeley that found the opposite was true.
Trump appeared to reference the public polling in favor of a name change on Sunday.
Trump speaks during a dinner for Republican senators in the State Dining Room on Friday
Trump is slightly off about the team names. They were the ‘Washington Redskins’ and then the ‘Washington Football Team’ but never the ‘Washington Redskins Football Team’
‘Our great Indian people, in massive numbers, want this to happen,’ he claimed. ‘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!!!’
He also demanded the same from MLB’s Cleveland Guardians, née: ‘Indians.’
‘Likewise, the Cleveland Indians, one of the six original baseball teams, with a storied past,’ he wrote.
It’s unclear where Trump is getting ‘six original baseball teams’ from. The NHL famously has six original teams and MLB’s National League was once limited to a half dozen clubs. However, the Guardians franchise is in the American League, where it has been known as the Broncos, Naps and Indians before adopting its current moniker in 2022.
Of course, ‘Indians’ is quite the same as ‘Redskins’ – a traditionally pejorative term detested by some Native Americans and tolerated by others.
And it wasn’t just the name that led to division among Native Americans. A year ago, the family of the man depicted in the former Redskins logo urged the team to bring his image back to the helmet after years of controversy over the image.
‘The fans want him back and we want him back,’ Thomas White Calf, a great nephew of late Blackfeet Nation chief John Two Guns White Calf, told Fox News after meeting with Senator Steve Daines (Republican, Montana ).
Thomas’ pleas came four years after the team began its rebranding, first becoming the Washington Football Team on a temporary basis before adopting ‘Commanders’ and dropping the feathered John Two Guns White Calf emblem.
‘Our ancestor was the most famous and most photographed native in history,’ Thomas told Fox alongside his mother, Delphine White Calf, a niece of the late Blackfeet chief. ‘Two Guns was also the face on the Indian head nickel. I’m proud of him. The Blackfeet are proud of him.’
Leah Muskin-Pierret of Washington DC works on signs as part of a Native Americans protest against the Redskins team name in 2017. The team would change its name three years later
The club began as the Boston Braves in 1932 before changing its name to ‘Redskins’ a year later and moving to the US Capital in 1937. But it wasn’t until 1971 that Blackfeet leader Blackie Wetzel created a portrait of John Two Guns White Calf that ultimately became the team’s logo.
The term’s origin is disputed, according to a 2016 Washington Post article that claims it was first used as a pejorative as early as 1863 in Minnesota.
‘The State reward for dead Indians has been increased to $200 for every red-skin sent to Purgatory,’ read an announcement in The Winona Daily Republican. ‘This sum is more than the dead bodies of all the Indians east of the Red River are worth.’
By 1898, Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary began defining ‘redskin’ with the phrase ‘often contemptuous.’
A 2016 Washington Post poll found that 90 percent of the 504 Native American respondents were ‘not bothered’ by the team’s name. Now-former team owner Daniel Snyder ultimately wrote an open letter, defending his decision to keep the moniker by citing the study.
However, that survey and other similar studies have been slammed by journalists and social scientists as being unreliable.
‘The reporters and editors behind this story must have known that it would be used as justification for the continued use of these harmful, racist mascots,’ read a statement from the Native American Journalists Association. ‘They were either willfully malicious or dangerously naïve in the process and reporting used in this story, and neither is acceptable from any journalistic institution.’
A Washington Redskins fan looks on prior to the game against the Miami Dolphins in 2019
Redskins fan Louis Hilliard, center, has a conversation with Native American protester Jay Winter Nightwolf, left, and Peter Landeros in December of 2017
Many fans fought to keep the name, but the team ultimately relented in 2020
In March of 2020, UC Berkeley revealed a study that found that more than half of its 1,000 Native American respondents were offended by the team name.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2017 that a trademark law barring disparaging terms infringes on free speech rights. Prior to that, the United States Patent and Trademark office had tried to revoke the Redskins’ trademark because it was a racial epithet.
Ultimately it was uproar over Floyd’s death in 2020 that led to the change. When the team joined in a social media campaign against racism, many slammed Washington for its continued use of ‘Redskins,’ leading to the temporary adoption of ‘Washington Football Team.’
One twist in the story of the Commanders was their unexpected success with rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels last season. Finishing 12-5, Washington upset the Lions in Detroit en route to the NFC Championship, where they lost to the ultimate Super Bowl winners, the Philadelphia Eagles.
By taking another step in 2025, and potentially winning a Super Bowl as the ‘Commanders,’ Washington might sideline the debate indefinitely.
A football and a jersey sit on top the Resolute desk in the office of President Donald Trump as he announces a plan to bring the NFL Draft to the National Mall in the spring of 2027
Washington D.C. and the NFL’s Commanders are set to announce a deal Monday to bring the team back within the city limits after a nearly three-decade run in Landover
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and Commanders owner Joshua Harris met Trump at the Oval Office in May to announce plans to bring the league’s draft to the National Mall in 2027.
Washington was selected as draft hosts just days after DC mayor Muriel Bowser announced a plan to bring the team back to the city with a new field on the site of the old RFK Stadium, where the team then known as the Redskins played until 1996.
Currently, RFK Stadium stands on the site on the banks of the Anacostia River in the eastern part of the city.
The building has been in the process of a prolonged demolition that has been delayed multiple times. The building was closed back in September 2019, but structural demolition has only begun this year.
