course they they punish home mow sexuality by capital punishment, but you know, we have to make some distinctions, and, oh, yes, the thing that i was searching there for a second is, the justice department, let s remember, the justice department has indicted members of the qatari government for accepting for giving bribes to fifa, and indicting members of fifa ruling counsel, as well, so, i m not justifying it. the department of justice has said they got the games because they bribed officials. i mean, that s all in the public record. there s no excusing that. and but the rest of the world went along with it. i mean, fifa itself, you know, is probably in that same, you know, den of thieves that qatar is, so, you know, they re reprehensible, too. all right, what a big mess. i need you guys to educate me on fifa and soccer, because i know just enough to be dangerous. i m going to ask you guys to stick around through a break.
i m an oil baron, he left that out. but that s what the approach was, and yet when it comes time to actually show that level of transparent solidarity. as people pile on qatar for its laws, for its customs, for authoritarian rule, we have to remember that fifa and western sponsors, we have to remember that all the nations lined up to do this over the last decade, which makes some of the protests now a little bit thin. let me read your piece, dave, and then i want to bring in rick stengel to this conversation. you write this for msnbc. we can express solidarity with the lgbtq community of qatar and a express solidarity with the women and migrant laborers who died while helping qatar look presentable for this world cup and link the laws to a broader international trend to right
playing for their team. u.s. secretary of state antony blinken in qatar yesterday, the host nation of this year s world cup. he is there for meeting and for the world cup. it s coming under the shadow of laws criminalizing same sex relationships. as you heard there, blinken sharply criticizing concerns over sanction threats. fifa told team captains they would be given yellow card violations if they wear rainbow colored one love arm bands during their matches in support of inclusion. it has forced at least seven european teams to back out of their plans to wear them. they did express some satisfaction of what he describes deepening cooperation with his qatari counterpart.