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The Rams received’t be the one no-shows on the Tremendous Bowl. President Trump can be conspicuous in his absence from the most important annual, single-day sporting occasion in america.
“It’s simply too far-off,” Trump instructed the New York Put up. “I might go if, you already know, it was slightly bit shorter.”
Or maybe not up to now to his left?
Tremendous Bowl LX can be performed Feb. 8 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, a part of the San Francisco Bay Space that Trump has so usually reviled.
The groups — the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks — hail from deeply entrenched blue states. Massachusetts and Washington have voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in each election since 1988.
Trump additionally has expressed disgust over the musical performers at this yr’s sport: Unhealthy Bunny and Inexperienced Day, each unabashed critics of the present administration. Unhealthy Bunny will play the halftime present whereas Inexperienced Day will carry out forward of the kickoff.
“I’m anti-them,” Trump mentioned. “I believe it’s a horrible alternative. All it does is sow hatred. Horrible.”
Forward of a tour final fall to advertise his most up-to-date album, Unhealthy Bunny (whose actual identify is Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio) introduced he would skip america as a result of he was afraid of ICE raids at his live shows. The Puerto Rican famous person — who has almost 84 million month-to-month listeners on Spotify — defined why he made an exception for the Tremendous Bowl.
“What I’m feeling goes past myself,” he mentioned in a press release. “It’s for individuals who got here earlier than me and ran numerous yards so I may are available in and rating a landing. That is for my individuals, my tradition and our historical past.”
Inexperienced Day, an American pop-punk band of virtually 40 years, has since Trump’s first time period swapped a line within the lyrics of the 2004 hit “American Fool” from “I’m not a part of a redneck agenda” to “I’m not a part of the MAGA agenda.”
Turning Level USA, the conservative non-profit based by the late Charlie Kirk, introduced in October that it could stage its personal counterprogramming to the Tremendous Bowl and stream it on conservative shops. The “All American Halftime Present” is billed as “Celebrating Religion, Household, & Freedom.” As of Monday, musical artists had not been introduced.
Trump turned the primary sitting president to attend a Tremendous Bowl a yr in the past when he obtained a muted, blended response of cheers and boos in New Orleans. However this yr, the 5½-hour flight from Washington D.C. to the Bay Space apparently is simply too lengthy for the president, who in January alone has flown to Switzerland, Detroit and Palm Seashore.
Trump has lengthy loved attending high-profile sporting occasions. He was current on the School Soccer Playoff title sport between Indiana and Miami per week in the past and in 2025 attended the Military-Navy faculty soccer sport, the U.S. Open Closing and the Ryder Cup. In 2019, he attended Recreation 5 of the World Collection in Washington D.C., the place he was resoundingly booed.
The NFL has resisted strain to switch Unhealthy Bunny with a performer extra politically palatable to Trump.
“There’s lots of people proper now who don’t like Unhealthy Bunny being within the Tremendous Bowl halftime present,” NFL chief advertising officer Tim Ellis mentioned at a convention in October. “Effectively, not everybody has to love all the things we do. Unhealthy Bunny is f—ing superior.”
Not everybody has to love the groups that earned Tremendous Bowl berths and the states they name house, both. And never everybody has to approve of the venue. That features the President, who made it clear that if he decides to look at, he’ll accomplish that from a distance.
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