Tom Brady may be friends with former President Donald Trump, but he doesn’t in any way support Trump’s stolen election claims. That became very apparent when he and his teammates from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers visited the White House Tuesday to celebrate their Super Bowl victory, Mediaite [1] reports.
But he also offered up a minor joke at Trump’s expense and that led the notoriously right-wing media outlet, Breitbart, to suffer a meltdown.
Sure Trump defended Brady when Deflategate [2] was a thing, but reducing a football’s PSI is decidedly less toxic for the nation than engineering false election claims. Apparently, that’s not the way Breitbart sees it and everyone got all huffy after Brady said this:
“It didn’t look great at one point. We were 7-5, struggling a little bit, as the President alluded to. But we found a rhythm, we got on a roll,” Brady said during his visit to the White House. “Not a lot of people think that we could have won. In fact, I think, about 40 percent of the people still don’t think we won.”
“I understand that,” Biden quipped as the audience laughed.
Yes, this was a mild slap at Trump and his stolen election fan club but to some at Breitbart, this was a mortal offense, and the site published three [3] whiny [4] articles [5] about how that horrible Tom Brady had hurt his friend and blahblahblah.
😆Breitbart is having a total meltdown over Tom Brady's joke with Biden about Trump losing the election pic.twitter.com/dfhEEgSnDN [6]
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) July 21, 2021 [7]
Breitbart Senior Editor Joel Pollack was all snorty and farty over it too and whined on Twitter about Brady “stabbing Trump in the back,”
Whatever you think of Trump, watching Tom Brady stab him in the back is disgusting. The mark of a true tragic hero is that even his friends betray him. The man has sacrificed more for this country than Tom Brady — or Joe Biden, for that matter — ever will. https://t.co/HVPNnnbHi3 [8]
— Joel Pollak (@joelpollak) July 20, 2021 [9]
Wow. Touch these people with a feather and their fwuffy widdle feewings get hurted.
Brady’s joke was pretty harmless. I’d hate to see what these Breitbart folks do when something really and actually offensive happens.
And whether he’s Trump’s friend or not, this is only his second appearance at the White House. The first time Brady did this was in 2005, during George W. Bush’s presidency. Contrast that to 2015 and 2017, when he was conspicuously absent as his then-teammates, the New England Patriots celebrated Super Bowl victories at the White House in 2015 and 2017. And the Patriots shunned [10] the traditional White House ceremony in 2019.
But that’s not all. Brady and the former president are golf buddies, but the star quarterback never publicly supported Trump during the 2016 or 2020 presidential election. A MAGA hat was stuffed into the far corners of Brady’s locker during the 2015 NFL season, but that seems to be about as far as Brady took his support.
“He [Trump] sent it to me via R.K.K.,” Brady said in an interview [11] that year, in reference to Patriots owner Robert Kraft. “He always gives me a call and different types of motivational speeches at different types of motivational at different times. So now that he’s running for president, he sent me a hat, and he gave it to R.K.K. a couple of weeks back. So it found its way back to my locker.”
Last year, in an interview with Howard Stern, Brady, who’d just left the Patriots for Tampa Bay, explained that he keeps politics and friendship separate. Stern and Trump were also friends and the then-president’s offensive comments were like manna for the “shock jock” and his show.
Brady, however, didn’t share that sentiment.
“I got brought into a lot of those things because it was so polarizing around the election time,” Brady told Stern. “It was uncomfortable for me. You can’t undo things. And not that I would undo a friendship, but the political support is totally different than the support of a friend.”
I’m sure Trump will have plenty to say about Brady’s appearance at the White House. Because Trump can’t handle anyone making jokes at his expense, especially if that person shows up beside Biden.