The Super Bowl may have been a blowout for the Philadelphia Eagles and Most Valuable Player Jalen Hurts.
But the biggest winner wasn’t on the field at all.
The real MVP of Super Bowl LIX was President Donald J. Trump.
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Like the TV-savvy pro he is, Trump realized the most watched live show in the country was a massive self-publicity coup hiding in plain sight.
And for the four previous Super Bowls, Joe Biden was just plain hiding.
Biden was not alone in ignoring America’s prime sporting event. Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, all ignored it. Well, they watched it with their buddies but they never went. Nor did any president before them.
Incredibly, Trump was the first president in history to attend a Super Bowl.
And he quarterbacked the entire event like the master of publicity that he undoubtedly has always been.
It wouldn’t seem such a stretch to think it might be worth dropping into a contest the entire nation is obsessed with.
Advertisers fight to spend millions for a few minutes of prime, prime television property; an invite to perform at half-time is considered a cherry to top the biggest of musical careers; the audience is a who’s who of business leaders, Hollywood stars, and the big-hitting influencers of the moment.
In 2013, the last time the Super Bowl was held in New Orleans, a power outage delayed the game for 34 minutes. It was the first time the game had suffered for lack of power.
On Sunday night, all the power was there in the shape of the president. It was Trump in his element, playing to the crowd. Elon Musk can be the power behind the throne but MAGA’s emperor knows the world’s richest man doesn’t have the clothes for this kind of close-up.
They’re both as rich as Croesus but Musk doesn’t have Trump’s common touch.
Maybe the past presidents were worried about security. Trump’s already been shot at and survived. He must feel indestructible.
The president may be in the posh seats but he knows what the people back home are saying. You don’t get to have a monster hit show like The Apprentice without knowing what the public likes.
Even on his way home on Air Force One, Trump was busy on Truth Social. Not setting tariffs, not freezing budgets, or attacking his enemies. He wanted to know why there were still kick-offs in Super Bowls.
“The worst part of the Super Bowl, by far,” he wrote, “was watching the Kickoff where, as the ball is sailing through the air, the entire field is frozen, stiff. College Football does not do it, and won’t! Whose idea was it to ruin the Game?”
And he couldn’t resist a dig at Taylor Swift. “The only one that had a tougher night than the Kansas City Chiefs was Taylor Swift. She got BOOED out of the Stadium. MAGA is very unforgiving!” he posted. From the crowd’s boos, he plugged right into the zeitgeist in the stadium.
Just for good measure, he canceled the production of pennies. Not a problem there. Nothing sold for pennies in the Caesars Superdome.
If Patrick Mahomes had a bad night, then so did Biden. Not that anybody cares anymore.
Even David Axelrod, a loyal Democrat soldier, and Obama’s former chief strategist, had to admit it was a massive missed opportunity. “A year ago, Biden refused the traditional Super Bowl interview and the unparalleled audience it would have yielded. That bewildering decision was a major sign of trouble,” he posted. “Trump is all over it today.”
Protected by his dwindling band of loyalists, Biden was so out of touch as his term progressed that more effort was put into keeping him in cloisters rather than in front of the world’s cameras and so it is hardly surprising that he never made it to a Super Bowl.
But he could have watched and smiled and waved to the crowd. It wasn’t like he needed to debate anybody.
Think what you like about Trump’s nascent presidency, but he got it right on Sunday night. He has the ball and will hold it tight until someone rips it from his grasp. The end line is still four years off but you can bet your bottom dollar he will be at the next three Super Bowls. His only misstep was picking the Chiefs as the winner.
Next year, he’ll know who to back. Himself.
