Donald Trump is making a lot of history this week! He’s about to become the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl. And he’s also the first president to make borderline creepy overtures to an NFL quarterback and his wife because he’s deeply insecure about the fact that their pop-star friend doesn’t like him.
Yes, I know that on the surface, this Truth Social message in which Trump congratulates Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and his wife Brittany Mahomes on the recent birth of their child looks somewhat normal. But there’s a lot more going on here (even if we put aside Trump’s obsession with “good genes”).
From this post, you might assume that the couple just welcomed a child this week. Their third child was actually born on January 12, and they announced the news three weeks ago in a joint Instagram post. It’s not clear why Trump only congratulated them on Thursday, but it wasn’t the only odd thing he said about Mahomes this week.
When asked if he’s rooting for the Kansas City Chiefs or the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl, Trump responded, “I don’t want to say, but there’s a certain quarterback that seems to be a pretty good winner.”
Trump also recalled a conversation with Senator Tommy Tuberville, a former Texas Tech head coach, about working with Mahomes.
“Tommy Tuberville, a great coach,” Trump said. “You know, his quarterback was named Mahomes, he was a great college coach. And I said, ‘How good was he?’ He said, ‘You don’t want to know how good.’”
The problem with this story: Tuberville never coached Mahomes. He left the college in 2012, and Mahomes started in 2014, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Tuberville later tried to explain away Trump’s apparent lie, saying that while he never coached Mahomes, he did recruit him and “I got to be very good friends with him.” But on Thursday, Mahomes said that isn’t true either. “He did not recruit me at the time,” he said. “I don’t remember if I ever got to meet him or not.”
Trump’s motivations here seem to go beyond exaggerating the relationship he and his pals have with a star quarterback. Trump calling Brittany Mahomes “very beautiful and BRILLIANT” wasn’t just a stray compliment; it was a reference to her alleged support for him in the 2024 election.
This is where Taylor Swift comes in. Without launching into a 3,000-word explainer on the subject, the megastar is dating Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. During his 2024 campaign, Trump practically begged Swift not to endorse his Democratic opponent, but she did so anyway. Around the same time, people got upset because Swift maintained her friendship with Brittany Mahomes, whose social-media activity suggested she was probably a Trump supporter.
In September 2024, Trump added fuel to this controversy by bringing up Brittany Mahomes whenever he was confronted with the fact that Swift hates him. When Fox & Friends asked Trump about Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, he responded, “Well, I actually like Mrs. Mahomes much better,” as “she’s a big Trump fan.”
Then on Truth Social, Trump thanked “beautiful Brittany Mahomes for so strongly defending me.”
This was wishful thinking on Trump’s part. All Mahomes did was like, and subsequently unlike, a few Trump campaign posts on Instagram, then post a vague message criticizing her “haters.”
As for Patrick Mahomes, he declined to endorse any candidate in the 2024 election. “I think my place is to inform people to get registered to vote, to inform people to do their own research and then make their best decision for them and their family,” he told reporters in September.
This week, when asked about Trump attending the 2025 Super Bowl and calling him a “winner,” Patrick Mahomes was polite but noncommittal.
“It’s always cool to be able to play in front of a sitting president, someone that is in the top position in our country,” Mahomes said at a press conference. “I didn’t see that clip, but it’s cool to hear that he’s seen me play football and respects the game that I play.”
It’s possible — perhaps even likely — that privately, Patrick and Brittany Mahomes are both MAGA supporters. But despite Trump repeatedly making flattering remarks about the couple, it seems that they would like to be excluded from this narrative.
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