Like a reflex hammer to a knee, it’s now obligatory that any comment a celebrity makes in opposition to Donald Trump gets retweeted 10,000 times. As of early Monday afternoon, New England Patriots tight end Martellus Bennett was more than 99 percent of the way there.
“Patriots TE Martellus Bennett said he will not go to the White House to honor Super Bowl win. Not worried about what his owner thinks,” tweeted Dallas Morning News reporter Brandon George. 9,996 retweets and still rising: check.
Bennett was critical of the president in the lead-up to the big game, which annually comprises one of the most frenzied weeks in sports media. Per Detroit Free Press writer Dave Birkett, Bennett said last week he would likely skip a White House visit, a customary honor granted to the country’s major championship teams. Bennett has also been supportive of Black Lives Matter, a participant in the Colin Kaepernick-led protests of the national anthem on game day, and, jokingly, a detractor of Kanye West for his association with Trump. “So Kanye didn’t take the time to vote. And now he holding on to Trump’s coattail like Peter Pettigrew to Lord Voldemort. Kanye Pettigrew,” he tweeted in December, after the hip-hop artist met with the president-elect in Manhattan.
But Bennett has communicated a deeper message than the surface-level virtue-signaling that has appeared in many headlines about his commentary. Today, there’s this, inside a story from CNN:
He said the same thing after the election in November, only with more colorful language. “Politics is f—ed up from the get-go, anyway,” he told reporters, a message that doubtlessly resonates with many politicians, as well as voters. “So, I mean, we’re teammates. I’m not mad at people. I believe in people. It may be a bad thing, it may be a good thing, but I believe in people. What your religion is, what color you are, what you like to do in your spare time, none of that bothers me. As long as you’re a nice human being and we’re together, I have no—I don’t care. I just want to interact with every single person no matter what they believe in or what they do. I’m not against anyone or anything like that. I just kind of come and be around everybody. I promote growth and community. I’m not trying to divide or separate anybody, [into] types of people or anything like that. That’s not what I do.”
It is, however, what much of web culture tried to do before Sunday, painting Patriots owner Robert Kraft, head coach Bill Belichick, and quarterback Tom Brady—all having been Trump supporters in some capacity—as political villains as much as the reviled three-headed monster of a sports dynasty. It’s apparent that Bennett himself didn’t buy into it.
During a Super Bowl week press conference, Bennett playfully interrupted Brady’s remarks to the press with a shrill, “Hi, Tom!” from somewhere off-camera. Brady twitched, startled, and turned to his right. “Marty,” he deadpanned. “Scared the crap out of me right there.”
The tight end would catch five passes from the legendary signal-caller for 62 yards on Sunday night. Not one time was the ball wearing a Make America Great Again hat as it spiraled toward its target.
