Houston Thanks JD Vance In Advance

FIFA:

Houston Stadium will host seven matches at the FIFA World Cup 26™, including two games in the knockout phase.

This is a BFD for the entire city of Houston, as well as Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle. And JD Vance just shut on every one of them.

Relax on Vance's insane threat to jail international World Cup ticket holders if they don't leave the country immediately rather than stay here and spend tourism money

Watch. FIFA will be moving the World Cup elsewhere. https://t.co/qPZEAdICME

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) May 6, 2025

All the replies to Olbermann on Twitter are either xenophobic about visitors, or want FIFA to relocate the games. Which tells you all you need to know about Twitter.

But Vance wasn’t satisfied. He went further than that caption:

We will have visitors probably from close to a hundred countries,” he said at a White House event. “We want them to come, we want them to celebrate, we want them to watch the games.”

“But when the time is up, they’ll have to go home, otherwise they will have to talk to Secretary Noem,” he added about Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was sitting a few chairs down from him.

I know this affects many U.S. cities, but I’m thinking of Houston. Tickets are already on sale for the Houston games. Hotels no doubt already have reservations. The hospitality industry in Houston is preparing for this; looking forward to it. Houston is an international city, one of the most ethnically diverse in the country. We have a large (and beautiful) Hindu temple, shipped here piece by piece from India. We have a large (Asian) Indian community; a large Korean community; a large African community (I forget the nationality, but it’s African, not African American). As well as the usual American ethnic mix you’d expect in a city of 4 million. And people from around the world just living and working here because this is an international city. Just recently a local Vietnamese restaurant opened its second location about a block from where I know sit. Best tofu banh mis you can imagine (itself a product of French occupation of Vietnam 70 years ago). I’m working my way around to the pho, but I can’t get past that sandwich yet. There’s every ethnicity of restaurant you can imagine here. And a lot of hospitality.

I can go to Costco (walking distance from my house) and hear five, ten different languages spoken around me; Asian, European, African. This is a city that will welcome the world and be happy for them to stay with us after the games.

If they start canceling their reservations and decide it isn’t safe to come, now…who can blame them? JD Vance isn’t some brain dead FoxNews jabberhead. He’s the Vice-President of the United States.  And he just told the world to come see the games then get the hell out, because you really aren’t welcome here. He doesn’t speak for us; except he does. He spoke those words in the presence of the POTUS, who didn’t rebuke him or reject the sentiment. Even if FIFA doesn’t reconsider, I won’t blame anyone else who does.

JD Vance broke the National Championship trophy, then visited the Pope who died the next day, then visited India and a terrorist attack happened and war broke out, then endorsed his brother for mayor who lost 83-11%.

What’s next on the agenda?

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) May 7, 2025

I guess now we know.