crew is American, pirates are African, he hasn’t made up his mind who he is rooting for yet...
I think that he made up his mind who he is rooting for; he just doesn’t want to announce it. Americans are always the bad guys; he said so over and over in Europe. Africans are just trying to make a better life for themselves over those evil Americans who have make the lives of all Africans miserable. He has been pretty clear what he thinks about this sort of struggle in the past.
He needs to be totally scripted in order to answer it because he can make an official statement only two and a half months into his presidency that he intends to root for whomever is against the US.