Washington Nationals pitcher Sean Doolittle will not be going to the White House on Monday, due in large part to Donald Trump’s “divisive rhetoric.”
Instead he enjoyed today celebrating with teammates and fans.
Nationals’ fans celebrate with the team after their World Series victory.
“There’s a lot of things, policies that I disagree with, but at the end of the day, it has more to do with the divisive rhetoric and the enabling of conspiracy theories and widening the divide in this country,” he told the Washington Post. “At the end of the day, as much as I wanted to be there with my teammates and share that experience with my teammates, I can’t do it.”
Doolittle and his team were all invited to the White House to celebrate their World Series win last week.
He is the first player to publicly pull out of the event, though the Washington Post reported several others were “wrestling with the decision” over whether to attend.
The hometown team defeated the Houston Astros, 6-2, in Game 7 of the series.
Trump himself, a longtime sports fan, came out for Game 5 and was met with jeers, boos and chants of “lock him up” from fans.
As Donald Trump was booed by National fans during Game 5 of the World Series, he also viewed several “impeach Trump” banners scattered across the stadium.
“I feel very strongly about his issues on race relations,” Doolittle said about Trump, and he listed the Fair Housing Act, the Central Park Five and Trump’s comments following a white supremacist rally in 2017. He also mentioned that his wife, Eireann Dolan, has two mothers who are very involved in the LGBTQ community.
“I want to show support for them. I think that’s an important part of allyship, and I don’t want to turn my back on them,” Doolittle said. “I have a brother-in-law who has autism, and [Trump] is a guy that mocked a disabled reporter. How would I explain that to him that I hung out with somebody who mocked the way that he talked, or the way that he moves his hands? I can’t get past that stuff.”