Trump says World Cup referee’s red card call was ‘horrible’ but insists he left outcome to FIFA

U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on Mon­day took cred­it for get­ting FI­FA to re­view a red card is­sued against the Unit­ed States’ star for­ward Fo­lar­in Ba­lo­gun at the World Cup but said he did not de­mand an out­come.

“All I did was ask for a re­view,” Trump said when asked about it dur­ing an un­re­lat­ed Oval Of­fice event. “I didn’t say, ‘You have to do this.’”

Trump con­firmed that he called FI­FA Pres­i­dent Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no and asked for a sec­ond look at the pun­ish­ment against Ba­lo­gun in the Unit­ed States’ 2-0 win against Bosnia-Herze­gov­ina last week in San­ta Clara, Cal­i­for­nia, near San Fran­cis­co. But he said FI­FA made the fi­nal call to lift Ba­lo­gun’s manda­to­ry one-game ban for a foul tack­le, al­low­ing him to play in Mon­day’s round of 16 match with Bel­gium in Seat­tle.