Trump vs. the Horses: Derby Debate Goes Presidential- Jason Gay
I assume disputed Kentucky Derby winner Country House will not be invited to clip-clop into the White House.
No hoof-shake with the President, second-place horsey loser!
Mr. Trump is among the crowd ticked off that Country House—a 65-to-1 long shot; a schmo, a nuthin’, a nobody, really—was awarded the Derby Saturday after initial winner Maximum Security was disqualified for interfering with other horses.
Welcome to sports in 2019. Just when you think it’s gone completely weird, wait a minute. It’s going to get much weirder. Trump said Maximum Security’s DQ was the result of “political correctness.” Turns out, in the old days, when men were men, and horses were horses, a Derby leader could blithely fishtail across three competitors, forcing at least one jockey to check up and slow his horse, and nobody moaned to the Trot Police about safety or injuries or any of that namby-pamby stuff. “The best horse did NOT win the Kentucky Derby,” Trump said via his Twitter bazooka. “Not even close.”
I do feel bad for Maximum Security. That’s a rough way to lose a horse race, especially for a clearly talented horse. And I feel bad for Country House, who’s been deprived a true moment of celebration, and likely, a sprightly piaffe around the Oval Office. No munching on the delicious shrubbery in the Rose Garden, Country House! No sugar cubes…no carrot sticks…no hay with the leader of the free world. No McDonald’s, no Burger King, no Domino’s, either. Sorry, horsey.
(snip)
If the President thinks Maximum Security was robbed, the Sports Pope thinks the Derby got it right: “The owners can whine (not unexpected), the President can chime in (not unexpected), they can threaten legal action. But the fact remains the stewards did the right thing. Maximum Security had to come down,” talk radio potentate Mike Francesa tweeted Sunday evening. It’s the setting and circumstance that makes this a big deal, not the call itself. (This is not Saints-Rams, where the officials really did blow it.) It is unusual—a winner had never been disqualified on race day in the Derby’s 145-year history. If you watched the race on Saturday, you saw something that nobody’d seen before. But this is what it means to live in America today. At the rate we’re going, I think we’re going to see at least everything once.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-vs-the-horses-derby-debate-goes-presidential-11557143530 (paid subscription)
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