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Travis Kelce is “honoured” President Donald Trump — a frequent critic of his girlfriend Taylor Swift — is expected to attend Sunday night’s Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans.
“It’s a great honour, I think, no matter who the president is,” the Kansas City Chiefs tight end told reporters ahead of his team’s match against the Philadelphia Eagles. “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 so it’d be pretty cool.”
But Kelce’s enthusiastic response sparked backlash on social media from Swift’s legion of fans.
“How is it ‘an honour’ when this was him literally a few months ago?” one person asked, sharing a message from Trump in which he wrote, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”
“Taylor, girl, you better run,” a second person warned while another joked that Kelce was “sleeping on the couch tonight.”
Others suggested that Swift should break up with the three-time Super Bowl winner for his answer.
“If my partner was being neutral about someone who talked S*** about me we would be broken up QUICKLY!!!!” one person said, with another adding, “that man literally tweeted f*** Taylor Swift or whatever… STAND UP FOR YOUR GIRLFRIEND !!”
Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes also reacted enthusiastically to Trump’s appearance at Caesars Superdome. “It’s always cool to be able to play in front of a sitting president,” Mahomes told reporters. “Someone that is at the top position in our country.”
By comparison, when Eagles QB Jalen Hurts was asked about Trump’s appearance Sunday, he replied: “He’s welcome to do whatever he wants.”
Since he began dating the pop star in the fall of 2023, Kelce has found himself drawn into an ongoing war of words between Trump and Swift.
Despite years of staying quiet on political issues, Swift broke her silence in 2018 when she announced she was voting for two Tennessee Democrats.
After previously calling her “fantastic” and “terrific,” Trump was miffed at her public declarations. “Let’s say that I like Taylor’s music about 25% less now, OK?”
In 2020, after Trump tweeted threats at George Floyd protestors in Minnesota, she accused the commander-in-chief of “stoking the fires of white supremacy” and promised to use her voice against him in that year’s presidential election.
Swift ended her message by writing, “We will vote you out in November.”
The message racked up millions of likes and became Swift’s most-endorsed post on the platform.
Last fall, in the run-up to the U.S. election, Swift posted a photo alongside her cat Benjamin Button and told her 283 million followers on Instagram that she was “voting for Kamala Harris.”
Swift said in her message that she was moved to speak out after Trump decided to post AI-generated pictures encouraging her fans to vote for him. One showed Swift dressed as Uncle Sam, and the text said “Taylor wants YOU to VOTE for DONALD TRUMP.”
Another showed women wearing “Swifties for Trump” T-shirts.
Days after her endorsement of Harris, Trump took to his Truth Social platform and declared, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”
After they first started dating, Trump weighed in on the relationship between Swift and Kelce during an interview with the Daily Caller.
“I wish the best for both of them. I hope they enjoy their life, maybe together, maybe not — most likely not,” Trump said.
During this past NFL season, Swift came under fire from some of her Swifties after she hugged Brittany Mahomes (the wife of the Chiefs quarterback), who publicly supported Trump’s re-election bid.
As the controversy played out behind the scenes, Trump thanked Mahomes for “defending” him after she gave her stamp of approval to his “2024 GOP Platform” that promised to, among other things, “stop the migrant invasion,” “deport pro-Hamas radicals,” “keep men OUT of women’s sports,” “lock up violent offenders,” “prevent World War III,” and “stop the migrant crime epidemic.”
“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 in a post on his Truth Social website.
During a call-in to Fox & Friends, Trump predicted Swift would “probably pay a price for (her support of Harris) … in the marketplace.”
For his part, Kelce has enraged parts of Trump’s MAGA world (and other anti-vaccine activists and conspiracy theorists) after appearing in ads promoting COVID-19 vaccines.
“He doesn’t give a s— what happens to all the young men who take the Pfizer booster he’s been pushing on them,” conservative podcast host Megyn Kelly said last fall.