The Daily Beast is definitely pulling for one team to win Sunday’s Super Bowl, and its definitely not the New England Patroits.
In a bizarre, angry screed published Sunday morning, Daily Beast writer Colin Smith excoriated the Patriots for being “Team MAGA,” the living manifestation of “MAGA scum,” and, perhaps most bafflingly of all, “the preferred team of white nationalists.”
Clearly, Smith is rather miffed that the Patriots are making their eleventh appearance in the Super Bowl Sunday evening, and their fifth in six years, and he’s quite angry that Brady, coach Bill Belichick, and team owner Robert Kraft are allowed to compete, given that they are clearly “supporters” of President Donald Trump.
Smith calls Brady, in particular, “unnerving,” because at a send-off rally, Brady led a chant of “we’re still here,” which sounded, to Smith, suspicously like “build the wall,” or “lock her up.” Brady, Smith insists with characteristic subtlety, is a “square-jawed grifter throwing red meat to the hogs at an alt-right rally, screaming at the libs who thought Nancy Pelosi and her gender warriors were gonna keep DECENT AMERICAN FOLKS from BEING HERE.”
Brady, Belichick, and Kraft have all committed the cardinal sin, Smith says, of being Trump supporters, though Smith’s evidence for their support is scant. A “Make America Great Again” hat appeared over Brady’s shoulder during a single post-game interview back in 2015, and Brady was clear at the time that the accessory was a gift from golf buddy Trump. Brady repeatedly refused to express any public support for Trump’s politics, and often suggested to reporters who asked, that while he liked Trump as a person, he and the then-presidential candidate “disagreed.”
Belichick wrote a “letter” to Trump that Trump often referred to in his campaign speeches. Kraft donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration committee and got a “shout out” from Trump at the event (since then, though, Kraft has publicly parted ways with the president over Trump’s comments about NFL players kneeling in protest during the national anthem).
None of these are particularly egregious transgressions — except to Smith, who admits Kraft has distanced himself from Trump and that Belichick is a “robotic” force who “thinks only of football.” All Smith knows is, the Patriots are bad, and you might actually be racist for liking them.
““When you root for the Patriots, you are associating yourself with a virulent and revolting strain of politics that seeks to Make America Great Again — which is to say, white, European, English-speaking,” he writes.
Social media, of course, was having none of Smith’s sudden wokeness.
This passes for “journalism”? Who at the Daily Beast would let this appear? The media truly doesn’t understand how it continues to undermine itself. https://t.co/gYfoQT21CZ
— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) February 3, 2019
“But why do more and more normal Americans dislike the hard working, selfless, daring firefighters of democracy known as journalists?” they asked, without irony https://t.co/fX4bs0bDJx
— Buck Sexton (@BuckSexton) February 3, 2019
Why, are they also supported by the Virginia Democratic Party or something? https://t.co/7OlKJ2lbWM
— Orange Muppet Energy (@sunnyright) February 3, 2019
No doubt, the media will be shocked when Trump improves in Massachusetts in the 2020 election.