When President Donald Trump was introduced at the Washington Nationals home game in 2019, he was met with boos—with some in the crowd screaming “Lock him up!” as his image flashed on the big screen. During the last campaign cycle, in 2023, Trump also received some boos at the Clemson-South Carolina football game—while other fans chanted, “We want Trump! We want Trump!”
Fast forward to 2025, and the new president will again be met with a roaring crowd on Sunday as he descends upon the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans to watch the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs. He’s the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl, and shortly, he’ll hear how the over 70,000 people filling the stadium feel about that.
While the president’s guest list for the big game hasn’t been released, he’s expected to be joined by some family members and others in his regular posse. House Speaker and Louisiana representative Mike Johnson will likely join the president in his box. His oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., along with his girlfriend Bettina Anderson, were in NOLA on Saturday night for a pre-Super Bowl party. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man who has spent the last few weeks upending federal funding systems in Washington, has been spotted at the last two Super Bowls and may make an appearance this year, too.
The former first lady, and longtime Eagles fan, Jill Biden, will also be in attendance.
Since Trump announced this week that he’d be at the Super Bowl as the invited guest of Gayle Benson, the owner of the New Orleans Saints, major players from both teams have been asked to weigh in.
“That’s awesome. It’s a great honor,” Travis Kelce, the tight end for the Chiefs, said. “I think you know, no matter who the president is, I know I’m excited because it’s the biggest game of my life, you know, and having the president there—it’s the best country in the world—and that’s pretty cool.”
Trump has publicly disparaged Taylor Swift, who is dating Kelce, even posting “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” after the singer endorsed then-Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024.
Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes also answered that it would be “cool” to play in front of the president, saying, “It’s always cool to be able to play in front of a sitting president, someone that is at the top position in our country.” His counterpart, Eagles QB Jalen Hurts, said that the president’s attendance wouldn’t bring any added pressure.
At this Sunday’s game, for the first time since 2021, the message “End Racism” will not be stenciled on the turf above one of the teams’ end zones. It’ll be replaced by “Choose Love.” The move from the NFL comes after Trump signed executive orders targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion measures in practically every corner of government.
(The NFL has held that the messaging swap is unrelated to Trump’s plan to attend the game, and is instead meant to “capture and lift the imagination of the country,” according to spokesperson Brian McCarthy.)
Trump’s choice to attend the game is the latest episode in his long and fraught relationship with the National Football League.
As early as the 1980s, Trump has wanted to own an NFL franchise, including the Baltimore Colts, the New England Patriots, and the Buffalo Bills. When he didn’t score a team, he ended up buying the New Jersey Generals of the United States Football League in 1984. As the New York Times’s Ken Belson reported Sunday, Trump would go on to push other owners to sue the NFL for trying to prevent the USFL, who play in the spring, from participating in the fall. “After a bitter trial,” Belson writes, “the league was awarded three dollars in damages” and collapsed soon after.
In the 2010s, Trump utilized his connection with Patriots owner Robert Kraft to help raise his profile with football fans, gaining the support of Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and coach Bill Belichick. Kraft and six other team owners each donated $1 million to Trump’s 2017 inauguration.
During Trump’s first term, he railed against protests taking place in the NFL to address racism in the organization. As Colin Kaepernick and other players began to kneel during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Trump called for the NFL to make a rule against the action, calling it “total disrespect.” Back in 2018, when the Eagles took home the Super Bowl title, nearly all of the players and coaches said they would boycott the traditional visit to the White House due to Trump’s rhetoric around kneeling.
In response, the then-president canceled the invite, saying at the time, “The Philadelphia Eagles are unable to come to the White House with their full team to be celebrated tomorrow.” “They disagree with their president,” he continued, “because he insists that they proudly stand for the national anthem, hand on heart, in honor of the great men and women of our military and the people of our country.”
According to CBS News, fewer than 10 members of the team planned to attend Trump’s celebration.
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