Trump: Super or not?
Visit will divide Patriots for one day
WASHINGTON — Unless the Trump Trio of Robert Kraft, Bill Belichick and Tom Brady pulls off the mother of all no-shows, today’s White House visit by the Super Bowl champion Patriots isn’t going to rewrite anybody’s political playbook.
It’ll be whatever you want it to be.
If you’re all in with President Trump and believe he
will “Make America Great Again,” you’ll applaud those members of the Patriots who shook the president’s hand and who, in doing so, stood up to a politically correct mob that doesn’t get it: He won. Get over it.
You’ll call these Patriots who make the trip, well, patriots.
If you believe Trump is totally unqualified to be president and that he proves it on a weekly, no, daily, no, hourly basis, you’ll applaud those members of the Patriots who decided to take a stand by not standing on the South Portico.
You’ll call those Patriots who did not make the trip, well, patriots.
And then it’ll be on to the NFL draft.
Every NFL team has an offense and a defense. The Pats do as well, but they also have a pro-Trump faction and a No Freakin’ Way faction. Kraft, Belichick and Brady head up Foxboro’s Team Trump; the No Freakin’ Way faction is seemingly headed by Devin McCourty and Chris Long (who signed with the Philadelphia Eagles last month), who have made it clear they want no part of today’s event.
From what we can glean, every member of the Patriots family, from Papa Kraft right on down to the cheerleaders, has made his or her peace with all this. Even after Trump won the election, nobody inside the locker room staged a sickin or a walk-out. They Did. Their. Jobs. And if there was a whole lot of discord going on in there that didn’t make it into the papers, so what. The Pats discorded themselves all the way to the greatest Super Bowl victory of all time.
About the only thing that will come out of today’s event is the opportunity to do some Team Trump vs. No Freakin’ Way scorekeeping. Those who show up will be stamped Team Trump; some of them may wind up as assistant Secretary of State or land an ambassadorship. Lord knows, they’d be just as qualified as many of those who’ve already landed on the White House depth chart. Those who don’t show up will be planted with No Freakin’ Way, no matter what explanation they offer.
The hope here is that we’ll at least get some fun out of all this. For example, it would be a wonderful photo op if White House spokesman Sean Spicer, a devoted Patriots fan boy from his days growing up in Rhode Island, pranced around the briefing room in his Gronk shirt. There’s been some buzz that Spicer will be hanging out today with WEEI’s Gerry Callahan and Kirk Minihane. If so, I hope Gerry and Kirk ask the tough questions, such as: Did Spicer and his Connecticut College fan boys ever rip off their shirts and use their bare chests to spell out B-R-U-S-C-H-I, and, if so, was Spicer the B or the S? Or somehow both?
(Conspiratorial fun fact: Sean Spicer and Patriots mascot Pat Patriot have never been photographed together.)
As for our president — or, as I like to call him, God’s Own Quarterback — he can have Pats fans from both sides of the political aisle rolling in the aisles simply by aiming all his barbs at a common enemy. Not ISIS. Roger Goodell. “Lock her up!” worked during the presidential campaign. Surely the president can recast that line in the campaign to give Goodell his comeuppance. (The only problem is determining who actually has more power in this country: Trump or Goodell?)
For those worrying (or hoping) Trump commits some kind of gaffe today, it wouldn’t be the first time a president or other political leader had difficulty pronouncing the names of our sports heroes.
President Reagan once struggled with the names of some oldtimey Celtics players during a Rose Garden appearance by the Green. President Obama couldn’t name any of the White Sox players he rooted for while growing up in Chicago, even though he purported to be a fan of the team. And Ted Kennedy once tried to talk about Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa but came up with the alt-news Mike McGwire and Sammy Sooser.
Don’t expect any gaffes today: By all accounts, President Trump knows his football. Don’t worry about a thing, folks.
As for that other football, the one that contains the nuclear codes, that’s an entirely different matter.