Category: International News

The Vatican said Pope Francis had rested, and the night had “passed peacefully” after revealing on Saturday that his condition continues to be “critical” as he suffers from a “prolonged asthma-like respiratory crisis”. The pontiff was described as “more unwell” than on Friday and he has received blood transfusions. The 88-year-old is being treated for pneumonia in both lungs at the Gemelli Hospital in Rome.

The blood transfusions were deemed necessary due to a low platelet count, associated with anemia, the Vatican said. It said the Roman Catholic leader was alert and, in his armchair, but required a “high flow” of oxygen and his prognosis “remains guarded”. “The Holy Father’s condition remains critical,” it said in a statement. “The Pope is not out of danger.” It added: “The Holy Father continues to be alert and spent the day in an armchair even if he was suffering more than yesterday.”

The Pope has asked for openness about his health, so the Vatican has begun releasing daily statements. The tone and length of the announcements has varied, sometimes leaving Pope-watchers to attempt to read between the lines. But this is by far the starkest assessment yet and it is unusually detailed. It declines to give any prognosis. It comes just a day after doctors treating the Pope said for the first time that he was responding to medication, although they were clear that his condition was complex. They said on Friday that the slightest change of circumstance would upset what was called a “delicate balance”. “He is the Pope,” as one of them put it. “But he is also a man.”

The Pope was first admitted to hospital on 14 February after experiencing difficulties breathing for several days. He is especially prone to lung infections due to developing pleurisy – an inflammation around the lungs – as an adult and having part of one of his lungs removed at age 21. During his 12 years as leader of the Roman Catholic church, the Argentine has been hospitalized several times, including in March 2023 when he spent three nights in hospital with bronchitis. The latest news will worry Catholics worldwide, who are following news of the Pope’s condition closely.

It is a busy Jubilee year for the Catholic Church with huge numbers of visitors expected in Rome and a major schedule of events for the Pope. He is not known for enjoying being inactive. Even in hospital, his doctors say he went to pray in the chapel this week and had been reading in his chair. But even before the latest setback, the Vatican had said he would not appear in public to lead prayer with pilgrims on Sunday, meaning he will miss the event for the second week in a row.

Well-wishers have been leaving candles, flowers and letters for the Pope outside Rome’s Gemelli hospital all week. There was no change outside St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican on Saturday evening, however, with no crowd gathering. But people passing through the square said they were following the news. “We feel very close to the Pope, here in Rome,” one Italian man told the BBC. “We saw the latest, and we are worried.”

Friedrich Merz is likely to become the next German chancellor after his conservative CDU party topped the vote in elections, exit polls project. The stuttering economy and immigration were major voter concerns. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) almost doubled its vote share and surged into second place. But it is likely to be frozen out of power as other parties are refusing to work with it.

SPD, the party of current Chancellor Olaf Scholz, slumped to third place, with just 16% of the vote – its worst showing in decades. The election came against a backdrop of the Trump administration transforming historic security ties with Europe and moving ahead with peace talks on Ukraine. Whoever wins, coalition talks are a near-certainty. Single parties rarely win majorities in German elections so Merz will have to open talks with other parties on forming a government.

More than 32,000 people have fled to towns in northeast Colombia as they attempt to escape a sharp rise in fighting between militant factions, according to the country’s ombudsman.

Iris Marín said the violence escalated last week in the Catatumbo region, displacing tens of thousands of people. Hundreds more remain confined to their homes and are unable to evacuate due to the ferocity of the clashes, Marín warned Tuesday in a video statement.

Colombian authorities say 80 people have been killed in the fighting.

Almost half of those displaced have flocked to the city of Cúcuta near the Venezuelan border. Officials there have launched a major campaign to shelter the more than 15,000 people who have arrived in recent days.

In Cúcuta, the city’s football stadium has been turned into a large welcome center, with thousands of displaced victims lining up to receive food, water and clothing from locals.

Many are also sheltering in hotels and the homes of relatives, Cúcuta Mayor Jorge Acevedo said, pledging to support those in need.

“We are going to address the emergency that is occurring. Total solidarity, respect, affection and love for these human beings who are arriving in the city of Cúcuta,” Acevedo said.

Violence in strategic drug production territory

The humanitarian crisis is a direct result of increased clashes between the National Liberation Army – ELN – and spin-offgroups of thedisbanded Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Both factions were founded around the 1960s and ‘70s as left-wing guerrilla groups, but are now mostly involved in drug trafficking and other criminal activities, according to Elizabeth Dickinson, Colombia senior analyst at the International Crisis Group.

The Catatumbo region in northeastern Colombia, where the crisis originated, is a strategic territory for both drug production and trafficking due to its proximity with Venezuela. The region has seen some of the highest levels of violence in modern Colombian history.

In response to the violence, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro has suspended peace talks with the ELN, whose actions he described as criminal. On Monday, he said he would declare a state of internal unrest, but that decree has yet to be published or signed.

The Attorney General’s Office on Wednesday reactivated arrest warrants for 31 ELN members who were involved in peace negotiations. The judicial body said the move was due to “the evidence and the seriousness of the criminal acts” in the Catatumbo region.

The arrest warrants had been suspended since 2022, when Petro restarted the peace process with that armed group.

Some have criticized Petro’s “total peace” initiative which has attempted to reduce violence partly through negotiations.

“The crisis in Catatumbo should be a wake-up call for the Petro administration. Its ‘total peace’, coupled with the lack of effective security and justice policies, have allowed armed groups to expand their presence and brutal control over remote communities across Colombia,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch.

CNN has reached out to the Colombian foreign ministry for comment.

Evacuation efforts

The Colombian cities of Ocaña and Tibú have also received 11,503 and 5,300 displaced people respectively, Colombia’s ombudsman Marín said Tuesday.

Other victims have fled to neighboring Venezuela, a country that in recent years has seen far more people leaving it’s borders than entering due to spiraling economic and political insecurity.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil said the country has implemented a humanitarian operation to help Colombian families that have arrived in the municipality of Jesus Maria Semprún near the border in recent days.

Colombia’s defense ministry said more than 400 evacuations have been carried out in the Catatumbo region since the uptick in fighting last week, while more than 5,000 soldiers and special forces unit have been deployed to Cúcuta.

Nuuk, GreenlandCNN — 

The comings and goings at Greenland’s new international airport in its capital Nuuk look a bit different of late, as journalists like me come here to see what all the fuss is about.

The fuss, of course, is the result of US Donald Trump’s interest in taking control of the massive island that is geographically part of North America but legally is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, a member of NATO, the European Union, and a US ally.

I wanted to drill down on what’s here, what makes it attractive and whether the local population is welcoming or hesitant about being in Trump’s sights.

“Greenland is the front door for North America,” said Tom Dans, leaning into the arguments of Greenland’s importance to US national security.

I’d wanted to speak to Dans, a private equity investor with prospective interests in the Arctic who campaigned for Trump, but I hadn’t expected to see him at the airport.

To be fair, Dans wasn’t hard to spot. He’s a tall Texan with one of those wide shiny smiles wealthy Americans tend to have. He was also wearing a baseball cap emblazoned with the American flag.

He didn’t have more time to chat then, so I stepped outside, into the 14 Fahrenheit (-10 Celsius) cold that was, I would learn, balmy compared to what was to come later in the week.

My CNN colleague Neil Bennett and I trudged through the snow to the back of a long line for taxis.

“You are here because Trump,” remarked a woman waiting in front of us. Not yet accustomed to the Nordic tone, I couldn’t quite tell if this was meant as a simple statement or an accusation. “We are,” I dutifully confirmed.

“They want more tourists to come here, they need to get more taxis,” she said. We needn’t worry too much though, she explained, we wouldn’t be waiting in the cold for too long. Despite the apparent shortage of taxis, they can’t go very far and return quickly. The trip to the center of Nuuk from the airport is about 4 miles — and then the roads just stop. There is nowhere else to go, at least by car. Greenland — three times the size of Texas — has only about 56 miles of paved roads.

She introduced herself as Lisbeth Højdal, a consultant from Denmark who was here to run a course training career counselors.

The Danish government provides Greenland a grant of about $500 million every year to support health, education and other services here. Højdal’s course was part of that package of support.

So, before I’d even had a chance to look around, I’d heard the views of outsiders — one American, one Dane.

But Greenlanders have many different views.

“We have always been told that Denmark is the big savior of Greenland,” Qupanuk Olsen recalls. The Danes, she says, look down on her and fellow native Greenlandic people who are Inuit: “You guys cannot stand on your own feet; you guys don’t have anything without us. You can’t study, you don’t have health care, you have nothing without us.”

Olsen is known as “Greenland’s biggest influencer” with more than a million subscribers combined across Youtube, TikTok and Instagram where she shows the world the best of Greenlandic, and specifically Inuit, culture.

For an introduction to that culture, she brings me to see the “Mother of the Sea” — a striking stone sculpture on Nuuk’s rocky coast, depicting Sedna, the goddess of the sea in the Inuit religion. At high tide the statue is partially submerged.

Inuits (sometimes incorrectly referred to as “Eskimos”) make up almost 90% of Greenland’s population of 57,000.

We walk a few steps away from the shoreline and the “Mother of the Sea,” and Olsen points to the top of a hill and another figure, “I really want this statue gone.”
The statue, which looks over all of Nuuk, is of Hans Egede, an 18th-century Dano-Norwegian missionary who brought Christianity to the island.

“Why should he be up there? Why isn’t it a Greenlander up there?” Olsen asks. “We Greenlanders should be more proud of who we are … not celebrate some foreigner who came here and changed our culture and colonized us.”

Danish control of Greenland dates to the time of Egede. Greenland was granted home-rule in 1979 and, after a referendum in 2008, the island was allowed more self-governing powers including the ability to hold a referendum on independence (though independence would also require approval from the Danish parliament.)

But despite the increased autonomy, for Olsen the statue of Egede is a daily reminder of Danish colonization — something she purposefully talks about in the present tense.

“I used to be a royalist. I used to look up to the Danish people and thought they were better than me. Now, I’ve really realized that’s not the case,” she says.

In the 1960s and 70s, doctors placed IUD contraceptives in young Inuit girls without their or their parents’ consent as a means of population control. An investigation by Danish and Greenlandic officials into what has become known as “the spiral case” is expected to finish this year.

“I should have a lot more cousins,” Olsen says.

Another practice known as “legally fatherless” allowed Danish men who impregnated unmarried women in Greenland to skirt any responsibilities for their child. Olsen says her mother was one of the “legally fatherless” children born here.

In recent weeks, Denmark has announced a boost in Arctic defense spending and the Danish king revealed a new design for the royal coast of arms, making far more prominent the symbols for Greenland and the Faroe Islands (also part of the Kingdom of Denmark.)

But it’s too little, too late, says Olsen, who supports independence for Greenland and is standing in upcoming elections.

She acknowledges an independent Greenland would need to sign new agreements with other countries for defense of its 27,000 miles of coastline, and other arrangements when it comes to trade and financial support, but for her that’s no reason to jump from Danish control to American.

“Why should I? I’m so proud of who we are as Inuit,” she says. “Why should we just be taken by another colonizer?”

The US already has strong connections with and interest in Greenland.

But even Boassen does not want Greenland to be taken over by the US.

He doesn’t want to be subsumed as the 51st state, he says, but wants the US to be Greenland’s “best and closest ally with everything — with defense, mining, oil exploration, trade, everything.”

Not all Greenlanders want to break free from Denmark.

“We might be ready someday, but not today, not tomorrow,” says Aqqalu C. Jerimiassen, the leader of Atassut, a party in favor of staying within the Danish kingdom.

He acknowledged the wrongs committed against native Greenlanders and said the Danes must accept responsibility.

“Every colonizer has made mistakes,” he said. “But we cannot live in the past.”

Atassut, which describes itself as a “moderate conservative” party, supports universal health care, free education, and other forms of welfare that are basic concepts across much of Europe, and which Denmark provides for Greenland.

He says while some here “very much would like to be US citizens and would like to follow the American dream,” most would not be in favor of joining the United States and losing universal access to these services.

Greenland is holding elections next month that may reveal more about its population’s views about future relationships with the world. And the parliament just fast-tracked a law banning foreign political funding.

That’s fine by Højdal — the Danish guidance counselor I met at the airport — who said Greenland’s future is for Greenland, not anyone else, to decide.

As she watches the news coming from the United States of the hectic first weeks of the second Trump administration, she says a Turkish proverb comes to mind.

“When a clown enters a castle, he doesn’t become a king. The castle becomes a circus.”

Greenland, she hopes, doesn’t become a circus.

“With respect to the so-called trade deficit,” Wildeboer said, “If you take out cheap oil, which US refineries refine and make a ton of money, the US actually has a trade surplus.”

Moreover, the exchange in auto parts between the two countries, Wildeboer explained, is pretty much even, give or take a few million dollars.

“Canada is the largest purchaser of US goods,” Wildeboer continued. “We’re a big customer. At the end of the day, I think you’d want to keep a customer.”

‘It’s gonna hurt anyhow’

Sultan Egebesci, originally from Turkey, has lived in Canada for four years and has worked at Martinrea for three. She considers the company her “second family.”

“Of course, I’m worried,” Egebesci told CNN when asked about the looming possibility of a trade war with the United States. But she said was trying not to stress out too much.

“I know when we do everything together, everything gonna be fixed,” Egebesci said of Canadians. “Everything can be fixed.”

Egebesci is encouraged by the movement to “Buy Canadian,” and told CNN that when she shops, she first looks for a “Made in Canada” label before making a purchase.

“I feel confident,” said Pisey Lim, another Martinrea employee. “I really trust the company.” Her friends at other companies nearby, however, “feel a little bit nervous.”

“They’re scared they might lose their job,” Lim said. “They see in their work, it’s quite less work. Some people stay home.”

Naitik Jariwalla, who’s worked at Martinrea for three years, said he was worried about the possibility of losing his job, but thought Canada was “taking the right steps.”

“The government has been prepared for almost a month now,” Jariwalla said. “I have hope for Martinrea.”

However, Jariwalla predicted that the issue wouldn’t go away anytime soon. It’s time, he said, to dig in. Canada should stand up to the United States “even if it hurts a bit.”

“It may take one or two years to settle down,” Jariwalla told CNN. “But this is a good time for Canada to support their legs and stop relying on another country. I think it’s going to be good for Canada. I think Canada can grow.”

“It’s gonna hurt anyhow,” Jariwalla continued. “Either you deal with it right now, or in the future.”

A ‘big deal’ in the States

Despite the Canadian flags hanging on the factory walls, Martinrea is in some ways an American company, too. Wildeboer points out that the company employs twice as many people in the US as in Canada, particularly in Michigan, where Trump won a slim majority in 2024.

“We’re a big deal locally,” Wildeboer said. “We take care of a lot of people. I would say that a lot of those people like President Trump and they like his message: lower inflation, more jobs, strong economy. But with the tariffs and so forth, you’re getting higher inflation, less jobs, weaker economy.”

The executive guessed that those employees might change their mind on the president’s agenda come midterm elections in two years. That said, apart from his position on tariffs, Wildeboer admitted he understands much of Trump’s message about Canada.

“A lot of what President Trump or the Americans have said to Canadians has a lot of merit,” Wildeboer said.

In response, Trudeau has agreed to appoint a “Fentanyl Czar” to deal with the issue. The prime minister even said that Canada would follow the US in declaring cartels as terrorist organizations, though Mexico’s president said she considers the US designation unhelpful.

“In the context of fixing our border, dealing with fentanyl or immigration, I think that the vast majority of Canadians agree,” Wildeboer said. “I think most Canadians would agree that we should spend more on our military. We should defend our Arctic. We have Chinese planes and Russian planes flying over our land. At the end of the day, that’s our land. We should protect it. We should protect it with the United States.”

Israeli troops have withdrawn from the Netzarim Corridor – a military zone cutting off the north of the Gaza Strip from the south.

Hundreds of Palestinians in cars and on carts laden with mattresses and other goods began returning to northern Gaza following the pull-out – often to scenes of utter destruction.

The Israeli withdrawal is in line with the Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement of 19 January under which 16 Israeli hostages and 566 Palestinian prisoners have so far been freed.

By the end of the first stage of the ceasefire in three weeks’ time, 33 hostages and 1,900 prisoners are expected to have been freed. Israel says eight of the 33 are dead.

Hamas seized 251 hostages and killed about 1,200 people when it attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, triggering the Gaza war.

At least 48,189 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s offensive, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry. About two-thirds of Gaza’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed by Israel’s attacks, the UN says.

On Sunday, crowds of Palestinians were seen traversing the Netzarim Corridor – mostly moving north to see what had happened to their abandoned homes.

“What we saw was a catastrophe, horrific destruction. The [Israeli] occupation destroyed all the homes, shops, farms, mosques, universities and the courthouse,” Osama Abu Kamil, a resident of al-Maghraqa just north of Netzarim, told the AFP news agency.

The 57-year-old, who had been forced to live for more than a year in the southern Gazan city of Khan Yunis, said he now planned to “set up a tent for me and my family next to the rubble of our house”.

“We have no choice,” he added.

Mahmoud al-Sarhi, another displayed Palestinian, told AFP that for him “arriving at the Netzarim Corridor meant death until this morning”.

He said this was “the first time I saw our destroyed house”, referring to his home in the nearby Zeitun area.

“The entire area is in ruins. I cannot live here,” he added.

About 700,000 residents of northern Gaza fled to southern areas at the start of the war, when the Israeli military issued mass evacuation orders before launching a ground invasion of the Palestinian territory.

Many of those displaced were subsequently forced to move multiple times after Israeli forces pushed into southern Gaza, too.

They were also prevented from returning to their homes through the Netzarim Corridor, stretching from the Gaza-Israel border to the Mediterranean Sea.

Israeli forces partially withdrew from the west of the corridor last month and the first Palestinians – pedestrians – were allowed to walk along the coastal Rashid Street as they crossed into northern Gaza.

Those on vehicles have to use Salah al-Din Street and undergo screening for weapons by US and Egyptian security contractors.

The Israel Defense Forces have not officially commented on Sunday’s withdrawal from the eastern part of the corridor, which will leave it in control of Gaza’s borders, but not the road that had cut it in half.

The Haaretz newspaper says the Hamas-run Gaza interior ministry has been urging people to “exercise caution and adhere to the existing movement guidelines for their safety”.

The troop withdrawal comes as an Israeli delegation is expected to fly to Qatar which has been moderating talks between the two sides in the Gaza war.

The Israeli government has previously said the delegation will initially discuss “technical matters” regarding the first phase of the ceasefire deal, rather than the more challenging second phase which is meant to lead to a permanent ceasefire, the exchange of all remaining living hostages in Gaza for more Palestinian prisoners and a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

That will require further direction from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who recently became the first foreign leader to meet US President Donald Trump since his return to the White House.

During the trip, in the most dramatic shift in US policy regarding Gaza in decades, Trump called for the removal of the territory’s entire civilian population and the development of what he called “The Riviera of the Middle East”.

Convening his first cabinet meeting since returning to Israel over the weekend, Netanyahu said Trump had come up with a “completely different vision, much better for the State of Israel”.

“A revolutionary, creative vision – and we are discussing it,” he was quoted as saying in an official readout of the meeting. “He [Trump] is very determined to carry it out. It also opens up many possibilities for us.”

Trump’s proposal, which would be a crime under international law, has been almost universally rejected, including by Arab states.

The Saudi foreign ministry said on Saturday that it would not accept “any infringement on the Palestinians’ unalienable rights, and any attempts at displacement,” accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing”.

Egypt has also rejected any idea of the removal of the Palestinian population and has said it is calling an emergency summit of the Arab League on 27 February to discuss what it called “serious” Palestinian developments.

Last year, President Joe Biden passed up a chance to be interviewed on the highly rated Super Bowl pregame show. This year, not only is President Donald Trump being interviewed, he is coming here for the big game in person.

By becoming the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl, Trump is turning the NFL’s biggest spectacle of the year into another episode of “The Trump Show.”

The show has been on seemingly 24/7 since the inauguration last month. It takes many forms: news conferences, contentious announcements, AI-generated memes and all-caps Truth Social posts. All of it makes Trump the proverbial main character.

“I’ve been so busy that it’s hard to believe,” he said at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, prompting knowing laughter from the audience.

Every new president generates a lot of news, but something feels different this time. To the delight of his fans and dismay of his detractors, Trump has made so many pronouncements and held so many press Q&A’s that he has been all but impossible to avoid.

Think about it: A year ago you could go days without seeing or thinking about Biden. You’re lucky if you can go hours without thinking about Trump. And that’s just how he likes it.

White House aides have indicated the president’s ubiquity is partly a strategy to impress Republican voters and disorient Democratic opponents.

During White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s first briefing on January 28, she proudly brought along a headline about his omnipresence. “Politico summed it up best: ‘Trump is everywhere again.’ And that’s because President Trump has a great story to tell,” she said.

Trump’s long history of courting media attention suggests that it’s also partly about satiating his own ego.

In the new book about attention, “The Sirens’ Call,” MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes argued that Trump’s psychological needs are “so bottomless” that “he’ll take attention in whatever form he can get. He’ll take condemnation, rebuke, disgust, as long as you’re thinking about him.”

Conversely, Trump boosters often argue that liberals play right into his hands by obsessing over all things Trump.

A strongman technique?

History professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present,” told CNN that Trump has a “personality cult” that views him as both a man of the people and a demigod, and his visibility is a key component.

“The strongman must appear not just omnipotent but also omnipresent, he is everywhere,” she said.

Trump seems to welcome every opportunity to show off his stamina and strike a contrast with Biden, even months after defeating him.

“He knows his base and how simple they are,” CNN contributor Cari Champion said during a recent “NewsNight” discussion of the “optics presidency” and how effective it’s been.

Trump “knows how to entertain them and it’s working,” she said.

In a Truth Social post on Friday, Trump previewed his Super Bowl pregame interview with Fox News anchor Bret Baier, which was recorded Saturday at Mar-a-Lago. “There hasn’t been one in four years (Gee, I wonder why?),” Trump wrote. (Biden participated in the pre-game tradition in 2021 and 2022.)

Even Biden would probably admit that Trump has superior attention-getting skills. Since retaking office, Trump has created so much purposeful chaos — including at federal agencies that are being gutted by the day — that journalists can barely keep up. News producers who wake up in the morning to prep an evening show know that many of the political stories will change by airtime.

This, of course, is what 2017 felt like. CNN even penned a similar story back then: “The inescapable Donald Trump.”

Google Trends search data shows that interest in Trump news peaked in 2017, then dissipated for the other three years of his first term, and then only spiked again when he tried to stay in office following his 2020 election loss. Interest is back at those 2020 levels now, but not quite as high as 2017, according to Google Trends.

Democratic strategist James Carville, who grew up in Louisiana and spends much of his time in New Orleans, said Trump being “white hot” would ultimately redound to the Democrats’ benefit.

Channeling Muhammad Ali’s famous “rope-a-dope” tactic, Carville said of Trump, “just go ahead and punch yourself out the first five rounds.”

Flooding the zone with cultural fights

Many of Trump’s events, and even some of his executive orders, are as much about performing the role of president as about changing government policy.

In an influential essay on his Marginal Revolution blog, Tyler Cowen wrote that Trump’s incessant posts and photo ops are “investments in changing the culture.”

Trump’s strategy, he wrote, seems to be the following: “Every time the policy or policy debate pushes culture in what you think is the right direction, just do it. Do it in the view that the cultural factors will, over some time horizon, surpass everything else in import. Simply pass or announce or promise such policies. Do not worry about any other constraints. You don’t even have to do them! They don’t even all have to be legal! (Illegal might provoke more discussion.) They don’t all have to persist!”

Flooding the zone with the fights is “how you have an impact in an internet-intensive, attention-at-a-premium world,” Cowen wrote.

For Trump’s fans, it feels like nonstop “winning.”

Clay Travis, the conservative radio host and founder ofOutKick, which bills itself as the “antidote to the mainstream sports media,” told CNN that Trump’s attendance at the Super Bowl was reflective of a “major vibe shift” in Trump’s favor.

“I’d even go so far as to say a majority of NFL players, owners and execs support him” now, he said.

Young men have also swung toward Trump in significant numbers.

“It’s night and day between what we saw with sports in 2017, when many athletes openly attacked Trump,” Travis said. “I expect Trump to be cheered in the stadium and for USA chants to break out.”

The Super Bowl, in so many ways, symbolizes American culture, from the combat on the field to the consumerism of the $8 million 30-second commercials. No wonder it’s where Trump wants to be on Sunday night: It’s the biggest show in the world.