Rob Manfred and President Donald Trump held a meeting at the White House on Wednesday, confirmed a MLB spokesman for Washington Post.
“President Trump is a baseball fan for a long time. As he has done in the past, Commissioner Manfred was pleased to visit the White House to discuss baseball with the president,” MLB said in a statement.
Althegh have not made the details of his meeting, Manfred’s visit occurs shortly after Trump’s comments about successes of all time of the MLB, Pete Rose.
On February 28, Trump, 78, said he was planning to broadcast posthumous forgiveness to Rose, who died at age 83 in September, and published the news on social networks.
“Around the next few weeks I will sign a complete forgiveness of Pete Rose, which should not have been betting on baseball, but will only bet on his team winning,” Trump published in Truth Social.
Trump was not clear what Rose would forgive for exactly, since 17 times there was not sentenced for a crime to play in the MLB games.
Rose declared himself guilty of fiscal evasion and turned five months in prison in 1990, but Trump has not specifically mentioned this conviction when referring to forgiveness.
Manfred, 66, announced that the MLB was consulting a request that would make Rose eligible for the Hall of Fame on March 1, less 24 hours after Trump’s statement.
This most recent development occurs as a significant change of opinion of Manfred, who previously made that he had zero intentions to consult the Rose Hall of Fame.
“I think that when you bet on baseball, from Major League Baseball’s perspective, you belong to the permanently intelligible list,” Manfred said in November 2022, according to Atlético. “When Dalt with the problem, the last time he requested reinstatement, I made the function of that baseball list was the same as the eligibility criteria for the Hall of Fame.
“That is still my position. I think it is a conversation that really belongs to the Board of the Hall of Fame. I am on that board, and it is simply not appropriate for me to be in front of that conversation.”
Trump has criticized the MLB for placing Rose on her intelligible list, which means that Rose is disqualified to enter the baseball hall.
“Baseball, which is dying throughout the place, should leave its fat and lazy butt, and Pete Rose, Electric, although too late, in the Baseball Fame Hall!” Trump wrote about Truth Social in February.