The Arizona Cardinals have apologized to a woman who was told she had to remove a “Make American Great Again” hat to gain entry to State Farm Stadium for the team's game against the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday.
The team confirmed it had reached out to the woman in a statement to Fox News Digital on Wednesday.
“In an isolated incident during Sunday's game, a member of stadium security misunderstood a policy regarding prohibited items. As in most stadiums, 'signs, banners, flags or displays that are political in nature' are not permitted. However, that did not apply in this case. Moving forward, we will work to provide clarity to all stadium personnel in these situations. We have also reached out to the individual involved to let them know that their experience was not consistent with our policies and practices and to apologize for that,” the statement read.
The woman, an Arizona native and Cardinals season ticket holder, was named Susan Rosener. She and her husband were heading to their seats to watch the Cardinals' upset 41-10 victory over the Rams when a stadium staff member mistakenly told her to remove her hat, which revealed former President Trump's famous campaign slogan, according to multiple reports.
“You can't bring that in here,” the staff member said, according to Rosener, via News 12 Phoenix.
“She said, 'No political hats or T-shirts,' and I said, 'I haven't heard that at all.' And I said, 'That doesn't make sense to me.' And she said, 'I said, 'Take your hat off,'” Rosener said. “In retrospect, I wish I had stood my ground a little bit more, but I wasn't sure what the repercussions would be, and my husband would kill me if I did anything with the season tickets or jeopardized them in any way.”
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The Arizona Cardinals have apologized to a woman who was told she had to remove a “Make American Great Again” hat to enter State Farm Stadium. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)
The incident was initially publicized in a post on X by Turning Point Action field representative, VP Alyssa Goncales, who also posted alleged screenshots of text messages with other alleged attendees who were also forced to remove their MAGA hats or witnessed others being forced to do so.
“We have only heard from one individual, but if there were two others who had a similar interaction, that should not have happened either. Again, this is not our practice and in the 18-plus seasons we have been in this stadium, it has apparently never happened before. However, going forward we will work with all third-party groups that interact with our fans to ensure this is made abundantly clear,” the team said in a separate statement to Fox News Digital in response to the other allegations.
While the Cardinals have a list of items prohibited from entering State Farm Stadium on game days, “political hats or T-shirts” are not on that list.
Sunday's incident is not the first time that an attendee at a US sporting event wearing pro-Trump merchandise has faced security orders.
In the spring and summer of 2021, a man was ejected from MLB games at Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park, and Citizens Bank Park for hanging banners in the stands that read “Trump won! Save America!” The man, Dion Cini, now a conservative political influencer on X, repeatedly posted body camera footage of his police escorts outside the stadiums.
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In the spring and summer of 2021, a man was ejected from MLB games at Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park, and Citizens Bank Park for hanging banners in the stands that read “Trump won! Save America!” (Sarah Stier/Getty Images)
On June 27 of that year, Cini posted images on X (then known as Twitter) of an alleged letter from MLB informing him that he had been banned from participating in MLB games until further notice.
Cini commented on the recent incident involving Rosener in an interview with Fox News Digital on Wednesday.
“This is the country we've become, and the fact that she did it and put it in a can is the reason they asked her to do it, because they know she would probably comply. And that basically sums up the entire state of America right now,” Cini said. “They'd have to kill me to get me to take off my MAGA hat without force! I've never taken off my MAGA hat for anybody.”
Arizona is considered one of the “sunbelt” states up for grabs in the upcoming election, as Trump won the state in 2016 but lost it in 2020.
A Fox News election poll released on August 28 shows Vice President Harris currently leading the former president by less than 1 point.
In the Arizona Senate race, Democrat Ruben Gallego leads Republican Kari Lake 56%-41%. Democrat Jacky Rosen leads Republican Sam Brown 55%-41% in the Nevada Senate race. In the North Carolina gubernatorial race, Democrat Josh Stein leads Republican Mark Robinson 54%-43%.
Following the Rosener incident, Lake has asked all Cardinals fans to wear MAGA hats at the team's home games for the remainder of the season.
“Each [Cardinals] “Every fan who loves America should wear their MAGA hat to EVERY AZ Cardinals game this season,” Lake wrote in a post on X in response to a story about the incident.
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The woman, an Arizona native and Cardinals season ticket holder, and her husband were heading to their seats before a stadium staff member mistakenly told her to remove her hat, revealing former President Trump's famous campaign slogan. (Emily Elconin/Bloomberg)
Meanwhile, concerns have grown in the state that illegal immigrants may be able to cast ballots in the upcoming election.
A 'coding error' in state software puts citizenship status of 100,000 people in question Arizona registered votersprompting the state's Democratic secretary of state to insist that he will send ballots to those affected anyway.
“I'm not willing to disenfranchise so many voters by suddenly and with little notice limiting them to a federal-only ballot when none of them had any real knowledge of this problem or any fault of it,” Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said during a news conference Tuesday. “We've inherited this problem. We're working on it and we're going to fix it. It's as simple as that.”
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