United States President Donald Trump has made his feelings on Major League Baseball’s labor situation known in the past, publicly calling for the sport to adopt a salary cap. But when he was asked about the looming MLB lockout and the World Series on Tuesday, he didn’t seem very interested in the topic.
While Trump predicted that a lockout is “going to happen,” he quickly cut off a reporter’s follow-up question about the two teams playing in this year’s World Series, saying “nobody cares.”
Trump Backs a Salary Cap
Back in June, Trump made it clear that he believes baseball should have instituted a salary cap “a long time ago.”
“If you don’t have a salary cap, you don’t have a sport. Because they can’t help themselves. You know, in sports they can’t help themselves,” Trump said at the time, via Bloomberg. “They should have done it a long time ago.”
Those comments led ESPN’s Jeff Passan to suggest that the president could get involved in the negotiations between MLB and the MLB Players Association.
“It’s a possibility just because you’ve got a president who has publicly stated that he thinks baseball should have a salary cap who likes involving himself in sports,” Passan said on The Max Mannis Podcast.
The collective bargaining agreement between MLB and the MLBPA expires on Dec. 1, and a lockout is widely expected once it does.
A salary cap is the biggest sticking point. The league is pushing hard for one, while the union has called any system involving a cap a nonstarter.
That debate only intensified after the Los Angeles Dodgers won back-to-back titles with one of the sport’s biggest payrolls. But the Dodgers were swept by the Milwaukee Brewers in the NLCS, and the World Series now features the Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays, two teams known for winning on a budget.
‘Nobody cares’
Given the backdrop of the impending lockout and the fact that the World Series features two smaller market teams, Trump was asked a question on Tuesday about the situation.
“So there’s a looming lockout coming in Major League Baseball, as you know,” the reporter said.
“I think it will. That is going to happen,” Trump replied in a clip shared by Aaron Rupar.
But when the reporter tried to follow up by noting that the two World Series teams are lower-salary teams, Trump wasn’t having it.
“Okay, let’s do it another time. Nobody cares,” Trump said.
Clearly, for someone who has been so vocal about a salary cap, Trump didn’t have much interest in talking baseball on Tuesday.
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