Mookie Betts Says He'll Skip Dodgers' July 23 White House Visit, Cites Family Not Politics

Betts says it's about a newborn, not a president

Mookie Betts will not join his Los Angeles Dodgers teammates when they visit President Donald Trump at the White House on July 23, the shortstop confirmed in an interview with Jack Harris of The California Post. The visit is scheduled to happen between road series against the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Mets, according to larrybrownsports.

Betts, who welcomed his second daughter with his wife Brianna in April, says the timing is simple. "We just had a baby. You don't get many days off," Betts said. "They're coming [on the road trip]. And just want to hang out with the fam. That's really kind of it."

He was blunt about what happens next regardless of his choice. "If I do [go], people are gonna hate me," Betts said. "If I don't, people are gonna hate me. So instead of trying to make everyone else happy, I'm gonna think about myself and my family. People are gonna try to drag me into politics, just because I am who I am. That's just the cards I'm dealt. So it is what it is."

A history that cuts both ways

Betts isn't a stranger to this decision. He declined to visit the White House in 2019 when his former team, the Boston Red Sox, won the World Series during Trump's first term. But he made the trip in 2021 with the Dodgers to see President Joe Biden, and again in 2025 to see Trump after LA's most recent championship, according to larrybrownsports.

That back-and-forth record undercuts any simple story that Betts is boycotting Trump specifically. He's skipped a Republican president's visit and attended a Democratic president's visit and a Republican president's visit since. His stated reasoning this time, a newborn at home and a road trip that already eats into family time, is exactly the kind of scheduling conflict that keeps plenty of professional athletes away from these ceremonies in any given year.

The visit has become a yearly political fight anyway

What stands out is the noise around it. When the Dodgers accepted the White House invitation after their 2024 title, groups including the National Day Laborer Organizing Network publicly pressed the team to stand "on the right side of history" instead, according to Fox News. Los Angeles Times writers argued it would be hard to imagine the team posing for a "celebratory photo op" with Trump, framing the city itself as "Democrat blue" rather than just Dodger blue, Fox News reported.

Fans and commentators who see the visit as an implicit endorsement of the president aren't inventing that concern out of nowhere. Athletes attending a White House ceremony have used the platform to make political statements before, and some fans reasonably read attendance or absence as a signal either way.

But the traditional White House visit for a championship team is a decades-old ceremonial event, not a campaign rally, and it happens under Republican and Democratic presidents alike. The Dodgers made the trip to see Biden in 2021 without it becoming a national controversy. The controversy shows up specifically when Trump is the one in office, which suggests the backlash has more to do with the current occupant of the Oval Office than with the ceremony itself.

LA County has more registered Republicans than any other county in the country by raw numbers, and the Dodgers carry a national fanbase stretching into states like Arizona, Georgia, and Texas. Treating a 25-man roster and its millions of fans as a monolithic voting bloc is its own kind of bad-faith reasoning, whichever direction it points.

What's left unresolved

Betts's explanation is on the record and consistent with his stated priorities: a newborn, a road trip, limited family time. Neither Fox News nor larrybrownsports reported any statement from Betts suggesting a political motive, and Betts explicitly denied one.

What remains unclear is how many other Dodgers will also sit out the July 23 visit, and whether the team will address the pattern directly before then. Fox News noted Betts is "the latest" player to skip the ceremony, without naming which others have already done so this year. That list, and any official Dodgers comment on attendance numbers, hasn't been reported yet.