New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft revealed personal details of his relationship with former President Trump during an interview on “The Breakfast Club” on Friday.
The NFL owner, who has an estimated net worth of $11.8 billion, admitted he has donated to Trump’s presidential campaign in the past. They first connected in the 1990s and after Kraft’s first wife died in 2011 after a battle with cancer when she was 68 years old.
“Donald Trump became a social friend in the early ‘90s, when I was going down to Florida. And then when my wife…. died 13 years ago, he was one of four or five people who reached out to me and was really, really nice,” Kraft said.
“The only donation I ever gave to him was he called me when he got elected, and I made a strong donation to his inauguration. I couldn’t believe it, it was like having someone who was a drunk fraternity brother become president of the United States.”
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The Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
However, the owner said he distanced himself from the former president after the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
“I will say this,” Kraft said. “I was very upset (with) what happened January 6. And I haven’t talked to [Trump] since then.”
The Patriots have gone to other lengths to distance themselves as a franchise from the former president since then as well.
In May 2021, the team and Kraft denied allegations he and Trump attempted to pay a U.S. senator money in order to drop an investigation into a cheating scandal involving the team, per a published report by ESPN.
The report alleged that Trump met with late Sen. Arlen Specter in 2008 and offered him “money in Palm Beach” if he dropped his investigation into the Spygate scandal, in which the Patriots were disciplined by the NFL for filming a rival team’s coaching signals. Trump had not started his political career at the time and was well-known as the star of reality show “The Apprentice.” ESPN says Trump was acting on behalf of Kraft, a claim those close to the former president and the team deny.
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Robert Kraft and Patriots head coach Bill Belichick after defeating the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC championship Game at Gillette Stadium on Jan. 22, 2017, in Foxboro, Massachusetts. (Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
“Mr Kraft is not aware of any involvement of Trump on this topic and he did not have any other engagement with Specter or his staff,” a team spokesman said to ESPN.
Trump reportedly also saw a friendship with former Patriots star quarterback Tom Brady sour over time, but for a completely different reason.
In the book “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future,” author Jonathan Martin wrote that the friendship between Brady and Trump began to sour after Brady married his wife Gisele Bundchen and began following a notoriously strict diet and lifestyle in 2005.
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Former President Trump, holds a town hall at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center on Oct. 14, 2024, in Oaks, Pennsylvania. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
“The football star, Trump said, had not been the same after marrying Bündchen, who insisted on cooking him a painstakingly health-conscious diet,” Martin wrote.
Brady and Trump reportedly became friends upon first meeting in 2001 when Trump asked Brady to judge a Miss USA competition. They regularly complimented each other in public statements throughout the early 2000s.
Brady told Howard Stern on Sirius XM in April 2020 that he chose to distance himself from Trump when the former president launched his presidential campaign in 2015 and asked the former NFL star to speak on his behalf at the 2016 Republican National Convention.
“It was uncomfortable for me because you can’t undo things, not that I would undo a friendship, but political support is a lot different than the support of a friend,” Brady told Stern.
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