SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
Ahead of Australia’s World Cup match against the US in Seattle, The Seattle Times ran a story saying some local soccer fans had “mixed feelings” about supporting the home team.
Carey Lefkowitz, a 47-year-old executive at a market research company, said US President Donald Trump was tarnishing the country’s image abroad. “I still want the US team to win, but everything that goes with that? I’m conflicted,” he told the newspaper.
It’s not an uncommon sentiment, even as Americans enjoy a summer for the ages. They are, with Mexico and Canada, hosting the World Cup, and their team is top of its group. New Yorkers are on cloud nine after the Knicks won the NBA championship. And the country is turning 250, an occasion of great democratic pride marked by seemingly endless celebrations.
But for some, it is a bittersweet birthday. In the America of 2026, it is difficult to put politics aside – even for a day. The nation is as divided as ever, and many Americans are struggling to reconcile their patriotism with their distaste for Trump – and their fellow citizens who support him.
What’s more, Americans find their country increasingly disliked around the world. A large survey by the Pew Research Centre released this week showed sentiment about the US – not just Trump – is in negative territory.
OF 42,000 respondents in 36 countries, 57 per cent said they took an unfavourable view of the US, and only 37 per cent had a favourable view. In Australia, it was much more pronounced: 24 per cent looked upon the US favourably, and 76 per cent unfavourably.
Only Turkey, Malaysia, Pakistan, Sweden and the West Bank/East Jerusalem had a harsher view of the US – and not by much. There was consistently negative opinion across western Europe, and in Canada and parts of Asia – although views were more mixed in key US allies South Korea and Japan.
As Pew researcher Jonathan Schulman says, sentiment about the US is always highly correlated with people’s views of the president – and Trump has never been a popular figure abroad.
“People seem to be thinking of the government when they answer that question,” he says. “[But] there are some countries where views of the US might be a little more positive than confidence in the president … In Australia, it’s the case that views of both Trump and the US are quite low.”
Since last year’s survey, Trump has criticised certain European countries where, among right-wing voters, he previously enjoyed support.
He attacked Britain’s Keir Starmer and Germany’s Friedrich Merz over the Iran war and domestic policies; he raged at Spain for refusing to lift defence spending; and he recently feuded with Italy’s right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. He also sparked anger across the political spectrum in Europe by insisting the US should take control of Greenland, a Danish territory.
The Pew researchers examined the attitudes of right-wing populist voters in those countries and found Trump had lost substantial support.
Confidence in the US president among Reform UK supporters fell from 62 to 48 per cent, and from 49 to 30 per cent among supporters of Brothers of Italy.
“So, double-digit drops,” Schulman says. “He still does better among those people, but one of the things that popped up this year was that even among those groups – Alternative for Deutschland supporters in Germany, National Rally supporters in France – his support has gone down.”
Some people are voting with their feet and avoiding Trump’s America. Monthly figures published by the US Commerce Department show tourism to the US has dropped off considerably.
In the first five months of 2026, tourism visas granted to western Europeans fell 9.9 per cent compared to the same period last year. In Asia, the decline was 6 per cent, and in the Middle East it was 11.5 per cent. The number of Australian visitors fell by 10.7 per cent.
There have also been mixed reports about the World Cup’s economic success. Stadiums are full and brimming with energy, but hotel bookings have reportedly fallen short of expectations, possibly due to high ticket prices and the cost of long-distance travel between host cities.
Still, many of those who have come from overseas are overjoyed with what they find. TikTok is full of foreign soccer fans trying Chick-fil-A, Buc-ees, Walmart and the Cheesecake Factory, or raving about America’s high-quality stadiums, dressing as cowboys or simply partying in the streets.
Somewhat predictably, this material has become fodder in the culture war between Trump-loving conservatives and Trump-hating progressives.
“America First” types are sharing videos of tourists loving their World Cup vacation, and using them to taunt naysayers for being unpatriotic. The White House promoted many of the clips, including several from English soccer fans who said the US had been misrepresented.
“We owe America a huge apology,” Oliver Henry told his TikTok followers. “America is nothing like the media tells us. Everyone is so friendly. Everyone is so accommodating.”
Henry’s videos have gone viral, and he was invited to an America250 event in Washington on Wednesday, where he met and took selfies with Trump. “He’s a bigger celebrity than me,” Trump said. Of course, other people are now accusing him of being a CIA plant, Henry says.
The Seattle Times story on Carey Lefkowitz also went viral among MAGA types, who accused the media of confecting anti-Trump outrage.
“THEY HATE THIS COUNTRY,” wrote Fox News host Laura Ingraham on X. Conservative activist Tom Fitton told his 3.2 million followers: “You can’t hate the liberal media enough.”
The notion that people are struggling to love their country in these times does jar with the jubilant images coming out of the World Cup, including in Seattle, or 250th birthday celebrations in various cities. But it is a feeling with which some Americans are grappling.
During an unrelated conversation with this masthead, Doug Farrar, a Democratic Party strategist who lives in Washington, says both sentiments can co-exist.
“I definitely don’t support President Trump at all, and I think he’s terrible for the country, but I also am a patriotic American who’s excited to celebrate our 250th anniversary,” he says.
“[Just] because I think don’t think President Trump is a good president because I think he is both immoral and bad for the country, doesn’t mean I don’t like America.”
In Trump’s world, though, it means exactly that. He frequently accuses anyone who disagrees with his positions of hating America. And he has turned official 250th birthday events into tributes to himself.
‘There’s so, so much more to the United States than the Trump family and their corrupt grift that they’re forcing us all to live through.’Doug Farrar, a Democratic Party strategist.
On Wednesday night, Trump addressed the Great American State Fair in the National Mall. It was an initiative of Freedom250 – a group and fundraising vehicle established by Trump’s administration to organise the 250th birthday celebrations. It is separate from America250, the congressionally mandated body tasked with organising official events.
The State Fair was supposed to feature an array of musical acts – Martina McBride, Bret Michaels and others – but they pulled out en masse, saying they had been misinformed that the event would be nonpartisan. Trump canned the concert and instead delivered a rally-type speech.
In between boasting about his achievements, attacking his opponents and plugging the TrumpRX medication website, Trump did make some appeals to national unity, saying the country’s 250th birthday was a time to be proud of the past while raising expectations of what America can be.
“The best is yet to come,” he said.
Trump has announced that Washington’s official celebrations on July 4 – Independence Day itself – will also be a Trump event. “We are going to host the most spectacular TRUMP RALLY of them all, a ‘TRIBUTE TO AMERICA’,” he posted on Truth Social on June 15.
Writing in The Atlantic, Tom Nichols said that in Trump’s attempt to dominate this momentous national occasion, he was making it small.
“Most Americans seem to understand that the Fourth of July is about something bigger than ourselves,” Nichols wrote. “Trump cannot comprehend patriotism, the love of one’s country. Instead, he defaults to nationalism, the sour and hostile glorification of one’s own nation over everyone else’s.”
Farrar says the situation stinks. “I went back and looked at a lot of the cool pictures and videos from the celebration in 1976, and they looked awesome,” he tells me.
“It looked like people had a really good time. It looked like there was a really serious effort to try to celebrate all of the different things that make America what it is.
“Unfortunately, President Trump is such an egomaniac that he only wants this celebration to be about himself. There’s so, so much more to the United States than the Trump family and their corrupt grift that they’re forcing us all to live through. And that’s a real bummer.”
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