“He went through 40 years of hell,” President Donald Trump said at an impromptu press briefing on Monday, returning to one of his most persistent sports-world grievances.

The all-time Major League Baseball hits leader was “very mistreated,” Trump added, and should have been placed in the Baseball Hall of Fame “a long time ago.”

Trump appeared with White, the UFC’s longtime CEO, days after jokingly floating him for press secretary. Asked whether he had any advice for the president on the pardon question, White kept his distance from the politics but backed the idea.

“I don’t advise the president on anything ever, but yeah, I think it’s fair,” White told reporters.

Read also: Inside Harry Kane’s extreme fitness regime: Electric needles, five-hour sessions and strict diet

The pardon cannot reach Cooperstown

Trump returned to a distinction he has made before.

“He was gambling on his own team, Dana,” Trump said of Rose.

“He wasn’t gambling against. That’s different.”

Legally, the question is narrower than the president’s language suggests. In 1990, Rose pleaded guilty to two federal felony counts of filing false income tax returns and served five months in prison. That conviction is the one a presidential pardon could in theory touch. Baseball’s lifetime ban, by contrast, came from his own agreement with the commissioner’s office in 1989 after an investigation found he had bet on Cincinnati Reds games while he was managing the club, and no White House action can lift it.

Read also: Christian Falk shuts down major Bayern Munich transfer claim involving Désiré Doué

MLB already moved first

The president’s push also arrives after baseball itself acted. On May 13, 2025, Commissioner Rob Manfred removed Rose and 16 other deceased individuals from the permanently ineligible list, writing in his decision that “a person no longer with us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game.”

That ruling, not the White House, cleared Rose’s path to Cooperstown. Trump’s first pardon pledge, posted on Truth Social on March 1, 2025, promised “a complete pardon of Pete Rose, who shouldn’t have been gambling on baseball, but only bet on his team winning.” Manfred’s reinstatement followed roughly 10 weeks later. No pardon has been signed in the 20 months since the Truth Social post.

Rose died on September 30, 2024 at age 83, finishing his playing career with 4,256 hits, more than any player in MLB history.

His name is now expected to go before the 16-member Classic Baseball Era Committee when it next meets in December 2027. If elected, enshrinement in Cooperstown would follow in the summer of 2028.

Read also: Kylian Mbappe misses France training as Zinedine Zidane calls up uncapped PSG forward

Read also: Usman Nurmagomedov and Merab Dvalishvili’s hotel brawl takes serious turn as police get involved