WASHINGTON — D.C.-area residents have a message for President Donald Trump who is threatening to derail the Commanders’ pending football stadium deal unless the team restores its old name: Stay out of the city’s business and do your job.
Trump posted on Truth Social on July 20 that he may block a deal for the team to build a new stadium on the old RFK Stadium site if the team doesn’t switch back to its former name, considered offensive to Native Americans.
‘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,’ Trump posted.
Steve Mahoney, 62, said Trump has “bigger fish to fry” than pressuring the Commanders to change the team name. “Focus on lowering prices, everything else that he said he was going to do that he’s not doing,” he said.
Mahoney, who retired from a career in pharmaceuticals, has held onto his love for his hometown team, the Chicago Bears. Now a Washington resident, he wants Trump to let both the capital city and its football team handle their own affairs, Mahoney said.
“The fans have adopted the new name,’ Mahoney said, ‘and there’s no reason to change it back.”
Jessica Brown, 48, said she only pays “just enough attention” to the president to “know how he can affect my life.”
The stadium issue is apparently one of those cases. When it came to Trump’s threats to block the RFK Stadium deal, Brown didn’t hold back. “He should just keep his nose in his own lane,” she said.
Brown, a nurse from Alexandria, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington, said she supported the Commanders and other teams changing their names to avoid titles broadly seen as racist.
“You should just choose other names. There are so many others,” she said. Her advice for local leaders involved in the stadium deal – “ignore him.”
Two new names, and then one stunning season
In 2013, then-team owner Dan Snyder bluntly told USA TODAY: “We’ll never change the name. It’s that simple. NEVER — you can use caps.”
But once major corporate sponsors threatened to pull funding amid the George Floyd protests in 2020, Snyder and the league had little choice. Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Guardians also underwent a name change around the same time and have been the subject of Trump’s recent nickname crusades.
The team rid itself of the former nickname in 2020 and went by “Washington Football Team” for two seasons before the “Commanders” rebrand in 2022.
When the Commanders were sold in 2023, the potential for another name change became possible, although it was not a priority for the new regime led by managing partner Josh Harris. In a news conference at the conclusion of a stunning season − which saw the often cellar-dweller team come within one game of the Super Bowl − Harris essentially quashed any idea of a name change.
The organization and players have embraced the “Commanders” name − as have exuberant fans thrilled with the team’s turnaround. But any name change would never have resulted in a reversion to the pre-2020 name.
Last year, both parties of Congress worked together to pass a bill that gave the local D.C. government a 99-year lease of the land on which the RFK Stadium site and the surrounding acreage sit on the banks of the Anacostia River near the eastern edge of the city. The Commanders played at RFK Stadium from 1961-1996 and have played at NorthWest Stadium in Landover, Maryland – considered one of the NFL’s worst stadiums – since.
That paved the way for the Commanders and D.C. to hammer out a $3.7 billion stadium deal, which was announced in April. The agreement would cost the District a projected $1.1 billion, while the Commanders are contributing $2.7 billion.
Trump’s threat called a move ‘to get attention’
Griffin Lafayette, a Raleigh, North Carolina native visiting Washington, called Trump’s threat to block the RFK stadium deal if the Washington Commanders don’t revert their name back to the original nickname “really stupid.”
“It’s just on his laundry list of things to complain about to get attention,” said Lafayette, a 25-year-old football fan.
Lafayette said he was “all for” ditching the team’s original name.
Gerald Collins, 66, said he doesn’t care about the team name, but he wants Trump to “stay out” of the RFK stadium deal.
“He isn’t a Washingtonian,” said Collins, a lifelong DC resident who works in construction. “What he’s doing is very wrong. He just wants to control things.’
Collins said he will always support the team no matter its name. He hopes the deal moves forward because it will bring the team back to the area where he watched them play when he was growing up.
Mayor confident stadium deal will get done
“I think the thing that we should focus on in D.C. is doing our part,’ Bowser said. ‘I have worked for the better part of 10 years to get our part completed, including getting control of the land, coming to an agreement with the team and advancing a fantastic agreement to the Council. So we need to do our part. Let’s focus on doing our part.”
It is now up to the D.C. City Council to approve the deal. D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, a skeptic of the proposal, has yet to set a specific date for a vote on it. Public hearings on the matter scheduled for July 29 and 30.
“No, it wouldn’t,” Bowser responded when asked whether the name being changed – even to the former name – would affect her support of the current stadium plan.
The topic has been of growing interest to Trump. On July 6, Trump told reporters that he wouldn’t have changed the name, although he elaborated that “winning” could make the name for palatable to him personally.
“Sounds like typical Trump being Trump,” he said. “If they wait long enough, he’ll get distracted, and it’ll go through.”
Kiekel, an engineer and Washington native, isn’t an avid sports follower, apart from some soccer. But he lives near the proposed stadium in the shadows of the U.S. Capitol.
“It’s tricky” because of Washington’s unique relationship with the federal government, Kiekel said. Questions over Trump and the federal government’s actual oversight of the land, especially under the new law, have emerged.
Don’t mess with success and leave the name, fan says
James Anderson, 47, said he hopes Trump’s threats don’t force the Commanders to revert to their former name, mainly because he wants the team’s good fortune to continue.
“They’ve been playing much better so I don’t want them to change anything again,” he said. Last season, the Commanders advanced to the franchise’s first NFC championship in 33 years.
Maureen Brown, 57, said it would be a “huge step back” if the Commanders returned to their former name.
“I don’t want to see them go back,” she said. “The Commanders is a fine name. ‘The Red Wolves’ would be good, too.”
Brown, who has lived in Washington for 18 years, said she has never seen a game because their current stadium is inaccessible without a car. The team moving to Washington − especially to her neighborhood − would give her plenty of chances to see her favorite player, quarterback Jayden Daniels, in the flesh. Daniels was the 2024 Offensive Rookie of the Year after a record-setting season in which the Commanders went 12-5 under first-year coach Dan Quinn.
Anderson, who works as security guard for federal buildings, moved to Washington from Texas 15 years ago and promptly dropped the Dallas Cowboys to support his new home team.
He said if the Commanders leave Maryland for a new stadium in Washington, he would be able to go to their home games.
“I was a Redskins fan much longer than I’ve been a Commanders fan,” he said. “But they have a good thing going now.”
Trump’s threats, he added, are “only about himself” – not the team or its fans.
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