The Blue Jays Have An Asshole, And His Name Is Anthony Santander

Outfielder Anthony Santander appears to be a brain-poisoned, red-pilled moron and an Islamophobe. Santander shared to his Instagram account on Wednesday a video warning about America’s impending adoption of Sharia law, and another about Muslims being inherently violent. The videos stayed up until Thursday, by which time they had drawn the attention of his employer, the Toronto Blue Jays. Santander then scrubbed the videos, and the Blue Jays issued a somewhat limp statement, assuring fans that “individual comments do not represent our organization’s values and beliefs.”

Santander seems to be getting his news from bad sources. Laura Loomer, the deranged right-wing carnival-barker, told her too-many Twitter followers Tuesday night that “America is over” and claimed, falsely, that the midterm blue wave swept into Congress people who “openly talk about their hatred of America, love of communism, and support for Sharia law.” The videos shared by Santander originated with the Instagram accounts of The American Truth Project and Nuhu Simon Jatau. The former is a right-wing propaganda dispensary whose website is littered with headlines like “300 MILLION DEAD AMERICANS” and “SATANIC PRAYER.” The latter is a very obviously psychotic Nigerian man (a Lakers fan, to boot) who posts swirly-eyed videos claiming, among other things, that Muslims are pagans who worship Satan.

You don’t have to be so fully submerged in Christian-right paranoia in order to encounter outright, targeted Islamophobia, and from newsmakers and publications that project a superficially convincing, far less YouTube-coded, veneer of authority. Maya Sulkin of the Free Press posted a video Wednesday claiming, falsely, that Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s senator-elect, delivered his victory speech in Arabic. Sulkin’s video linked El-Sayed together with Ilhan Omar, representative from Minnesota, and Aber Kawas, a newly elected state senator from New York, to make the explicit case that America is under attack from, uhh, democratically elected American Muslims. “I wonder if this sounds like America to you,” ponders Sulkin, twitching and quivering with panic. It was not until late Friday afternoon that the Free Press got around to dumping a correction onto Twitter, acknowledging that El-Sayed’s speech was delivered in English, with three Arabic phrases thrown in. “The Free Press regrets the error,” claimed the Free Press, falsely.

Santander is chugging this poisonous shit. I’m sure he has that in common with plenty of other professional baseball players. It’s unfortunate for the Blue Jays, from a public relations standpoint, that Santander is being a loudmouth about it. Toronto is a big multicultural city, and it is notably in not the United States but in Canada. Canada, you will remember, has spent the last two years under attack from the U.S. President, who has threatened to annex the entire nation and has punished Canada for not liking this idea too much with spiteful, fruitless, mutually destructive tariffs. The last thing your average Canadian sports fan needs right now is for a baseball moron to crash out racistly over Donald Trump’s bad luck in the midterms, while employed by their favorite baseball team.

Santander probably isn’t going anywhere: His playing contract with the Toronto Blue Jays is a bad one. General manager Ross Atkins signed Santander ahead of the 2025 season to a five-year deal worth $92.5 million, all guaranteed. There is even a team-option tacked onto the end, presumably as a practical joke. Santander played just 54 games in 2025, missing two-thirds of the season due to shoulder and back issues; when he was available, the outfielder posted a wOBA—the Statcast metric that assigns values to each method of reaching base, in order to give a picture of a player’s overall contribution to scoring runs—of .255, a terrible figure, the lowest he’s produced since become a full-time major-leaguer and 70 points worse than his career performance. Santander missed the entire 2026 season. He will earn over $19 million next summer. The Blue Jays are stuck with him. As of Sunday morning, he has not apologized.