President Donald Trump expressed unprompted displeasure at the name of the NFL’s Washington Commanders on Sunday. He threatened to pull the team’s stadium deal in Washington, D.C., if they don’t change it back to the Washington Redskins.
Trump wants the Commanders to revert the name, after the team dumped it in 2020 due to criticism of the name as offensive to Native Americans. The Commanders went nameless for two years as the ‘Washington Football Team’ before earning their current name in 2022.
The team has had success recently, making it to the NFC Championship with the help of new quarterback Jayden Daniels. A few months after the team’s best season in decades, they landed a $3.7 billion deal with D.C. to build a stadium at the site of the old RFK Stadium.
RFK Stadium holds tremendous nostalgia for fans who miss the success of the teams that played there in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. Some fans also hope the team can return to D.C. from Maryland, where they play at Northwest Stadium.
If Trump kills the deal, it would devastate fans and the team, who are hoping to drive forward with what Commanders owner Josh Harris says “will be the best stadium in the country when it’s built.”
What Trump has said
Trump called out the Commanders on Sunday for no apparent reason.
“The Washington ‘Whatever’s’ should IMMEDIATELY change their name back to the Washington Redskins Football Team,” he wrote in his first Truth Social post on the issue. “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!!!”
Hours later, Trump threatened the Commanders if they didn’t change their name. “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. The Team would be much more valuable, and the Deal would be more exciting for everyone,” he wrote.
The president previously suggested earlier this month that he was warming to the Commanders’ name because “winning can make everything sound good.”
“You want me to make a controversial statement? I would,” Trump said to a reporter. “I wouldn’t have changed the name,” he continued. “It just doesn’t have the same — it doesn’t have the same ring to me.”
“But, you know, winning can make everything sound good. So if they win, all of a sudden the Commanders sounds good, but I wouldn’t have changed the name,” the president added.
Does the president have the power to force a change?
Trump can’t change the Commanders’ name himself, nor can he kill the stadium deal.
Congress controls Washington, D.C.’s budget, and the city itself controls the land RFK Stadium sits on after Congress turned it over to D.C. with the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium Campus Revitalization Act.
However, Congress is controlled by Republicans in both the Senate and House. Trump has a heavy influence over congressional Republicans and could press them to act if the Commanders don’t change their name.
Members of the D.C. Council have yet to vote on the stadium proposal. Democratic D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson told the Washington Post that he doesn’t “know what the restriction” is that Trump would place on the deal.
Why now?
It’s unclear why Trump brought up the Commanders’ name. The name has only grown more popular with fans and residents.
But speculation points to Trump’s ongoing efforts to change the national subject away from his association with Jeffrey Epstein and the Epstein files. The administration has been under heavy scrutiny for promising to show transparency on the files before backtracking to say there is no Epstein list. Trump called the Epstein conversation a ‘hoax’ and criticized his supporters for believing in it.
Trump has also shown more interest in attacking D.C.’s independence in recent weeks. The president said earlier this month that he wanted to take over D.C.’s government because of crime and the Commanders’ deal.
“We’re thinking about doing it, to be honest with you. We want a capital that runs flawlessly,” Trump said. “It wouldn’t be hard for us to do it. And we’ve had a good relationship with the mayor. We’re testing to see if it works.”
“We have tremendous power at the White House to run places when we have to,” he said.
Trump has already made his impact on D.C. in his second term. Trump told D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to remove homeless encampments by the State Department in March or federal officials would be “forced to do it for her.”
The city then sped up the clearing of homeless encampments, though it denied it was because of Trump.
Bowser decided to demolish Black Lives Matter Plaza after pressure from the administration, saying they had “bigger fish to fry” than the conflict with Trump. The administration has pushed anti-diversity policies.
In May, Bowser decided to move away from the city’s sanctuary status by including a provision to expand the ability of local police to assist with deportations in her 2026 budget proposal. She said in February that D.C. was not a sanctuary city because it is “misleading to suggest to anyone that if you are violating immigration laws, that this is a place where you can violate immigration laws.”
Owners and DC Council appear unmoved
Harris has not publicly commented on Trump’s threat to his stadium deal yet, but he said earlier this year that the team had no plans to change its name. “In this building, the name Commanders means something,” Harris said during a February press conference. “It’s about players who love football, are great at football, hit hard, mentally tough, great teammates.”
Mendelson doesn’t understand Trump’s call to change the name. “As far as I know, people are generally satisfied with the name Commanders, and I haven’t heard a single suggestion that the council should condition the deal for a new stadium on a name change,” Mendelson told the Washington Post.
Bowser said last week that “the Commanders are anxious” to make the deal official and pressed the D.C. Council to “make moves” on the move. Trump’s threat is a reversal for him, after he suggested the Commanders’ move would be a good idea and said he could intervene to help them.
TRUMP THREATENS TO BLOCK COMMANDERS DC MOVE IF TEAM DOESN’T CHANGE NAME TO REDSKINS
“It’s a very important piece of property; it’s a great piece of property,” he said earlier this month. “So, we’ll see. But if I can help them out, I will. You know, ultimately, we control that; the federal government ultimately controls it. So, we’ll see what happens.”
“The owner is very, very successful and a very good man,” he added. “It would be a great place for the NFL to be there, I can tell you that.”
