During a March 6, 2026, White House “Saving College Sports” roundtable on NIL payments and the SCORE Act, conservative radio host John Fredericks and President Donald Trump got in a very entertaining exchange, with Fredericks commenting on his son’s college sports career and the president poking fun at him for bringing it up.
The event also featured Trump criticizing Judge Claudia Wilken’s 2014 NIL ruling as a “disgrace,” threatening college sports, and threatening an executive order if Congress stalls. In any case, speaking at the same event, Donald Trump criticized Judge Claudia Wilken and the O’Bannon ruling. “A person who knew nothing about sports made a ruling, and she turned the whole thing upside down. And it’s really a disgrace, if you want to know the truth. A damn disgrace,” he said.
“It’s just a shame… I looked at what’s happened to colleges and to college sports, and it is colleges, because colleges are going to go out of business,” he said later in the same event, and drawing attention to the issue affecting college sports.
In any case, Fredericks began a question during the press event by saying, “As you know, my son Joe is a high-level D-1 athlete, third-year relief pitcher, University of Maryland.” President Trump interjected: “How would I know that? … I don’t even know who the guy is,” sparking widespread laughter and viral clips.
Fredericks later told Daily Mail there was “no offense taken” in the “light-hearted” exchange—he meant “as you may know”—and he enjoys dialogues with Trump. Fredericks added that there were no hard feelings over his being the butt of the exchange, saying, “I always enjoy my dialogue with President Trump.”
Additionally, he noted that he was attempting to use the phrase “as you may know” rather than implying that Trump would be aware of his son’s career in college sports during the roundtable event, which went massively viral.
Predictably, social media found the whole thing hilarious. “Honestly, a good look into the mind of a journalist. Expects the most famous man on earth to know small details about his personal life,” reacted one user on social media to the clip. “Who TF do these people think they are? He slays them every single time,” another stated.
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NCAA President Charlie Baker stated, “It was good to hear so many speakers advocate for the SCORE Act, which does address many of the issues that cause both uncertainty and confusion for just about all of us in college sports these days,” after the roundtable.
The official noted, “The chance for us to engage with one another informally beforehand and afterward was also a real bonus. Everybody appreciated the President’s decision to get us together, given the urgency of the issues we were discussing.”
Likewise, the Big Four commissioners issued a joint statement which read, “Federal action on college sports is long overdue, and we stand with a broad coalition of conferences, student-athletes, coaches, and advocates in supporting the SCORE Act. We look forward to working with both President Trump and Congress to enact meaningful reform for student-athletes across the country.”
Additionally, Sen. Ted Cruz added, “The SCORE Act has many good elements, it’s a very good first step. But the challenge is for this to be passed into law and put on (the president’s) desk, we need 60 votes in the Senate, which means we need at least seven Senate Democrats (to support it). Right now there are zero.”
Featured image from embedded video