NFL quarterback Tom Brady alluded to the considerable number of Republicans who don’t accept President Joe Biden’s election victory in in a light-hearted poke at the president during a White House ceremony, The Hill reported.
At the Tuesday ceremony, Brady, standing alongside Biden, joked about the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ Super Bowl win.
“Not a lot of people, you know, think that we could have won,” Brady said, The Hill reported. “And in fact I think about 40% of people still don’t think we won.”
“I understand that,” Biden laughed.
Brady also joked that people have started calling him “Sleepy Tom,” a reference to former President Donald Trump’s derisive nickname for Biden during the campaign.
A Monmouth University poll released in March found that about two-thirds of Republicans do not believe Biden legitimately won the election after Trump repeatedly cast doubt on the election. There’s been no proof of widespread fraud.
The Tuesday White House event was to celebrate Tampa Bay’s Super Bowl LV win was Brady’s first visit to the White House in almost a decade. Tampa Bay won Super Bowl LV in February by defeating the Kansas City Chiefs, 31-9.
Brady, who last went to the White House to celebrate a Super Bowl win since 2005, has won six Super Bowl titles with the New England Patriots and captured his seventh after joining the Buccaneers for last season.
Biden took a photo with the team and Brady gifted him a Tampa Bay jersey with the number 46 and the name Biden written on the back.
“In the middle of a long dark winter every Sunday people were able to sit down and watch you play,” Biden said of the season played during the coronavirus pandemic.
Brady and Trump have in the past said they're friends and have golfed together. In 2015, he displayed a "Make America Great Again" hat from the Trump campaign in his locker, saying at the time he hoped Trump would win the presidency, but later said the comment was offhand and taken out of context.
Since his inauguration in January, Biden has welcomed one other professional sports teams to the White House, hosting the Los Angeles Dodgers in June to celebrate their victory in the 2020 World Series.