President Donald J. Trump on Sunday reportedly came to the defense of Roger Clemens, the 11-time All-Star pitcher whose path to Cooperstown has long been clouded by steroid allegations. In remarks posted to his Truth Social account after a round of golf with Clemens, Mr. Trump made a blunt appeal: “He should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame, NOW!”
The former president argued that Clemens has been unfairly excluded based on speculation rather than evidence. “People think he took drugs, but nothing was proven,” Mr. Trump wrote. “He never tested positive, and Roger, from the very beginning, totally denies it. He was just as great before those erroneous charges were leveled at him. That rumor has gone on for years, and there has been no evidence whatsoever that he was a ‘druggie.’”
Clemens, one of the most decorated pitchers in the game’s history with 354 career wins, faced years of suspicion during the steroid era.
He denied under oath to Congress that he used performance-enhancing drugs, later facing perjury charges for allegedly lying about his denials.
A jury acquitted him in 2012. The government’s case had relied heavily on the testimony of Clemens’s former trainer, Brian McNamee, who claimed he injected the pitcher with steroids on multiple occasions between 1998 and 2001.
For Mr. Trump, the Clemens controversy underscores a broader pattern of injustice in Major League Baseball’s handling of its legends.
He compared Clemens’s case to that of Pete Rose, baseball’s all-time hit leader, whose decades-long banishment from the Hall of Fame ended only after his death in September.
“After over 4,000 Hits, they wouldn’t put him in the Hall of Fame until I spoke to the Commissioner, and he promised to do so, but it was essentially a promise not kept because he only ‘opened it up’ when Pete died,” Mr. Trump said. “And, even then, he said that Pete Rose only got into the mix because of DEATH.”
Mr. Trump insisted that Clemens, unlike Rose, should not be forced to wait until after his lifetime for induction. “We are not going to let that happen in the case of Roger Clemens,” he wrote. “354 Wins — Put him in NOW. He and his great family should not be forced to endure this ‘stupidity’ any longer!”
The president’s comments reflect not only his affinity for sports but also his instinct to challenge institutions that, in his view, have lost credibility.
In Clemens, Mr. Trump sees a player punished not by proof but by rumor, kept out of the Hall for nearly a decade after his retirement despite career numbers that rival the game’s immortals.
By invoking Clemens and Rose together, Mr. Trump highlighted what many conservatives regard as a pattern of cultural gatekeeping — where institutions hold power over reputations and withhold recognition until it is too late to matter. In Mr. Trump’s telling, the Hall of Fame has the chance to correct that mistake with Clemens, and he has made clear he intends to press the issue.
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