Donald Trump singled out the Baseball Hall of Fame voters in a post on 26 August, accusing “a bunch of jealous people with far less Talent” of keeping the seven-time Cy Young winner out of the museum in Cooperstown, New York.
“He was also not convicted, or admitted, to taking Drugs,” Trump wrote of Clemens.
“Roger is easily one of the few Greatest Pitchers of All Time, winning 354 Games, 7 Cy Young Awards (A Record, by 3!), and played in three World Series, winning two! He was third in most Strike-Outs.”
The post ran alongside dozens of others fired off during a short window that afternoon. Trump closed with a swipe at the sport itself: “No wonder Baseball is in trouble!”
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A twelfth rejection
The intervention comes eight months after Clemens was passed over for the twelfth time. The Contemporary Baseball Era Committee met on 7 December 2025 and elected only Jeff Kent from a ballot of eight; Clemens and Barry Bonds received fewer than five votes each from the 16-member panel of Hall of Famers, executives and veteran media members.
Clemens had already exhausted his 10 years on the Baseball Writers’ Association of America ballot, peaking at 65.2 per cent in 2022, well shy of the 75 per cent required for induction. The Mitchell Report allegations of performance-enhancing drug use have shadowed his case throughout. Clemens has always denied taking them and was acquitted in 2012 on all six counts of lying to Congress on the subject.
The Pete Rose shadow
Trump used the same post to reopen his feud with commissioner Rob Manfred, claiming “the Commissioner told me he was going to approve Pete Rose, but he waited long enough until Pete died”.
Pete Rose died on 30 September 2024 at 83. Manfred removed him and 16 other deceased individuals from baseball’s permanently ineligible list in May 2025, ruling that lifetime bans do not extend beyond death. The move cleared Rose for consideration by the Classic Baseball Era Committee when it next votes in December 2027.
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Manfred has kept his distance from the president’s baseball interventions. Asked during this summer’s All-Star weekend whether Trump might get involved in the sport’s stalled labour talks, he told reporters it would be “wildly, wildly inappropriate for me to speculate what the President of the United States might do or not do in a hypothetical situation”.
Blocked from the next ballot
Receiving fewer than five votes in December ruled Clemens out of appearing on the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee’s next ballot in December 2028. The panel considers players from 1980 onwards and convenes once every three years, meaning the earliest fresh committee route into the Hall for Clemens is now December 2031.
The bigger fight for MLB is in the boardroom. The current collective bargaining agreement expires on 1 December 2026, with owners pushing for a salary cap system the players’ union has already rejected.
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