The Bidens are a prop in Angel Reese’s personal branding campaign

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In the world U.S. First Lady Jill Biden comes from – one of politics – sports are a lever. Whenever you want to gin up your support, you pull on it and pretend to care about the (/checks briefing notes) Cornhuskers or Hilltoppers or Horned Frogs.

If your left flank is exposed in the Austin, Tex., suburbs during an election year, you might be goaded into wearing a stupid-looking orange hat and saying “Hook ‘em horns” on TikTok.

Whose horns are we talking here? Don’t worry about it. All the politician needs to know is that whenever you press that red button called ‘Sports,’ your side gets a polling boost. It’s always worked before.

It’s not working so hot any more. For Jill Biden, that button has started a doomsday clock.

Biden’s mistake was the sort of thing that would have been a messaging coup not so long ago: She had an upbeat, public brainwave about women’s sport.

The biggest deal currently going in the American sports culture war (it’s one thing now) is last Sunday’s NCAA women’s basketball final between Louisiana State University and Iowa. LSU won. Their biggest star, Angel Reese, goaded Iowa’s biggest star, Caitlin Clark, near the end of it.

Some people took it as an offence. Some saw a heroic act. I’d call it the sort of glorious provocation upon which sports legends are built. Whatever the case, it wasn’t much to look at. The winner waved a hand in the direction of the loser.

But in its undertones, the gesture had all four of the American commentariat’s food groups – race, class, gender politics and red vs. blue bile. This one little wave was a grievance-amplifying, rage-inducing content smorgasbord.

Jill Biden thought she had a solution to the problem.

Typically, LSU would visit the White House to celebrate their win. The morning after the game, while the left vs. right signal fires were still being lit, Biden had an even better idea.

“We hope LSU will come, but, you know, I’m going to tell Joe I think Iowa should come too, because they played such a good game,” Biden told an audience in Denver.

What a lovely, inclusive suggestion. Up with people!

Also, there are the grubby politics at play. Donald Trump cratered Biden in Louisiana in the last election – 58 per cent of the vote to 40. Biden was more competitive in Iowa, losing 53 to 45. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out the calculation behind this off-the-cuff aside. And it’s just sports. Everyone understands it’s not real.

Unfortunately, LSU’s Angel Reese didn’t share that understanding.

Reese hit back hard on Biden’s ‘everyone’s a winner’ approach. She tweeted “A JOKE” over the story.

Somewhere in the bowels of the White House, an aide presumably came tearing out of a situation room yelling, “Abort Operation Sharesies! Abort!”

Biden walked back the Iowa invite, which had never been an actual invite in the first place. A spokesperson hinted she hadn’t meant it at all. So, what? We all hallucinated it?

Twenty years ago that would have done the trick. Not any more.

Reese has been on a week-long media blitz, ripping Biden wherever she goes. And why wouldn’t she? She’s a soon-to-be professional entertainer who has the rapt attention of an entire country. She isn’t just talking. She’s earning herself future millions.

There’s only so many ‘I love my teammates’ interviews anyone wants to see from any athlete (ie. a maximum of one). But the star-of-the-week skewering the president and his wife? Americans of every political stripe could watch that all day every day. Every time she talks, Reese ups the pressure. After blasting Jill Biden, she blasted her husband for not picking LSU in his Final Four bracket.

Many Americans asked, why wouldn’t Biden pick LSU? What does that mean?

I, a Canadian, ask, why does the American President have so much time on his hands that he considers himself an expert on college basketball? Is he already too much of an expert on inflation and Taiwan, and required a new hobby?

On Wednesday, Reese turned the temperature to 11.

“I don’t accept [Biden’s] apology because of, you said what you said. I said what I said,” she told a podcast. “I mean, you felt like they should’ve come because of sportsmanship? … They can have that spotlight. We’ll go to the Obamas. We’ll see Michelle. We’ll see Barack.”

I don’t know what the president had on his docket before Reese said that, but I know what’s on his docket now.

The days of American athletes tugging a forelock to their political leaders are long gone. The Obama/Trump presidencies turned White House visits into political referendums.

But this is a new phase entirely. Reese is in open conflict with the leadership of the United States, and she’s winning.

If she were a 37-year-old white hockey goalie, the Democrats would be eating this up. When that happened – Tim Thomas’s decision to skip the Bruins’ 2012 trip to see Barack Obama – the Dems could barely contain their glee.

Now that it’s a 20-year-old Black woman firing broadsides in their direction, the Democrats don’t know whether to run, hide, or dig a hole where they’re standing. Reese keeps sending verbal salvos at the White House and the White House keeps saying, ‘Thank you, ma’am, can I have another?’

How does this end? Imagine my excitement when I say to you – what if it doesn’t? What if Reese convinces her teammates to skip the trip? What if a few go, but she doesn’t and then does an Instagram Live from Pennsylvania Avenue during the visit? What if Reese ends up going and snubs Jill Biden? Or Joe?

Russia must look easy compared with the amount of diplomacy this mess will take to unravel.

All this out of a silly impulse to treat people like semihuman props, presuming none of them have ideas or agendas of their own. In this instance, turnabout is fair play. The Bidens are the prop in Reese’s personal branding campaign.

They won’t stop inviting championship teams to the White House or whatever double-wide trailer the prime minister of Canada is living in these days. It’s too tempting an opportunity for our leaders to look cool and vital by proximity.

But after this disaster, I’ll bet you fewer politicians will freely share their thoughts about athletes until they know for damn sure what the athletes think about them first.