Travis Kelce said it is an ‘honor’ to have Donald Trump at the Super Bowl in New Orleans on Sunday, while teammate Patrick Mahomes admitted he was flattered to be praised by the President in the Oval Office earlier this week.
It comes amid split support for Trump from their respective partners. Taylor Swift publicly endorsed Kamala Harris, taking a swipe at Vice-President J.D. Vance in the process, while her close friend and Patrick’s wife Brittany backed the Republican candidate.
After it emerged that Trump would be at Sunday’s game, the President praised the three-time Super Bowl winner, Mahomes, without mentioning him directly: ‘I don’t want to say [who will win] but there’s a certain quarterback that seems to be a pretty good winner.’
Mahomes responded to the President Wednesday, saying: ‘I didn’t see that clip, but obviously it’s cool to hear that he’s seen me play football and respects the game that I play. It’s always cool to be able to play in front of a sitting president, someone in the top position in our country.’
Moments later, Kelce went a step further in welcoming Trump to the game by saying: ‘It’s awesome. It’s a great honor, I think no matter who the President is.
‘I’m excited because it’s the biggest game of my life and having the President there, it’s the best country in the world so it’s pretty cool.’
Mahomes discusses performing in front of Trump ahead of Super Bowl
Chiefs and Eagles gear up for Super Bowl LIX in NOLA
Kelce’s comments Wednesday were striking giving how fiercely Trump has outlined his dislike of his girlfriend in the past.
‘I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,’ Trump wrote on social media, only in September, less than a week after Swift went public with support for Harris.
Mahomes’ wife Brittany, meanwhile, liked multiple social media posts and comments supporting Trump in the run-up to the November election and it didn’t go unnoticed from Trump himself.
‘I want to thank beautiful Brittany Mahomes for so strongly defending me, and the fact that MAGA is the greatest and most powerful Political Movement in the History of our now Failing Country,’ Trump wrote on his Truth Social network ahead of his electoral victory over Kamala Harris in November.
He ended his post with a rather prophetic message: ‘See you both at the Super Bowl!’
Brittany is expected to be on hand at Super Bowl LIX after giving birth to the couple’s third child. So, too, is Trump, who accepted an invitation from scandalized New Orleans Saints owner Gayle Benson.
Brittany isn’t the only member of the Chiefs Kingdom who supported Trump.
Owner Clark Hunt’s wife Tavia backed Trump’s vision for a border wall with Mexico, and on Wednesday, her daughter Gracie expressed her excitement over Trump’s presence at Super Bowl LIX.
Kansas City Chiefs heiress Gracie Hunt celebrates AFC championship win
‘It’s pretty cool. It’s pretty awesome,’ she told Outkick’s Riley Gaines. ‘Sometimes I just look at whoever I’m talking to and I’m like yeah that just wasn’t on my 2025 bingo card. But wow that’s just absolutely incredible.’
Now, though, Trump and Swift might share a rooting interest in the Chiefs.
Trump hasn’t officially tipped his hand one way or another, but he did congratulate the Chiefs on Truth Social for reaching the Super Bowl, while omitting any mention of the Eagles – a team he’s quarreled with in the past.
After Philadelphia’s Super Bowl win in February of 2018, Trump disinvited the Eagles from the traditional White House ceremony that June amid rumors several players planned to boycott the event.
‘The Philadelphia Eagles Football Team was invited to the White House,’ Trump wrote on Twitter at the time. ‘Unfortunately, only a small number of players decided to come, and we canceled the event.’
Trump then linked the issue to NFL players who protested racist police brutality by kneeling during the anthem, as well as those who remained in the locker room during The Star-Spangled Banner.
‘Staying in the Locker Room for the playing of our National Anthem is as disrespectful to our country as kneeling,’ he added. ‘Sorry!’
Only a handful of Eagles players remain in Philadelphia from that Super Bowl-winning team: Right tackle Lane Johnson, defensive end Brandon Graham, kicker Jake Elliott and long snapper Rick Lovato.
‘Congratulations to the Kansas City Chiefs,’ Trump wrote on Truth Social after Andy Reid’s team won the AFC Championship last month. ‘What a GREAT Team, Coach, Quarterback, and virtually everything else, including those fantastic FANS, that voted for me (MAGA!) in record numbers.’
Trump beat Harris in Missouri with 58.5 percent of the vote.
Years earlier, after Mahomes’ Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LIV, Trump famously congratulated the team from ‘the Great State of Kansas.’
The Chiefs play in Kansas City, Missouri, and not Kansas City, Kansas, a smaller town a few miles away across the state border.
