Last week, U.S. Representative Brendan Boyle issued an official statement expressing his outrage over Trump inviting the Kansas City Chiefs to the White House. The press release — entitled “Trump’s Pathetic, Sad Chiefs Invitation” bordered on poetic:

Donald Trump is inviting the Super Bowl losing team, Kansas City Chiefs, to the White House. It’s pathetic — a full-blown White House participation trophy.

I thought Republicans didn’t believe in participation trophies.

President Trump claims it’s because the Chiefs won the Super Bowl four years ago. But let’s be real: Trump backed the Chiefs this year, they lost badly to the Eagles, and now he’s throwing a fake celebration to cope. The Eagles crushed the Chiefs. No stunt or staged photo op will change that.

The statement closed with:

Fly Eagles Fly.

Of course it did.

Listen to the audio version of the story here: 

Meanwhile, all around Washington, D.C. and the United States of America, people — Boyle included — were publicly freaking out about the dismantling of the Department of Education, the U.S. Postal Service, Social Security, Medicaid, First Amendment protections and the Department of Health and Human Services, to name a few.

Really, was this the time to send an angry missive about presidential choices, however misguided, pertaining to football parties?

I mean, why not?

“It’s sort of a nice diversion from real life,” says Boyle between meetings about the latest news: Trump’s international tariffs. “I literally laughed out loud when I saw that President Trump was going to invite his favorite team, the Kansas City Chiefs, even though the Eagles royally kicked their asses in the Super Bowl … I wanted to highlight the absurdity of inviting, for the first time ever, the team that lost the Super Bowl to the White House.”

Trump’s move, he says, feels personal to lifelong Eagles fans like himself. “It detracts from the honor that is being bestowed upon the Super Bowl winners, in this case, our beloved Philadelphia Eagles. And besides that,” he adds, sending out the press release “was another opportunity to remind the world that the Philadelphia Eagles are Super Bowl champions. And I’m happy to take every opportunity that’s afforded to me to do so.”

If Trump hates the Eagles … should we hate Trump?

Boyle points out that in 2018, Trump cancelled the also-then-champion Eagles’ invite after Malcolm Jenkins, Chris Long and Torrey Smith — three whole players — said they probably wouldn’t attend the White House event. The President is “very well known to bear grudges,” says Boyle, adding the annual photo op should be “ceremonial,” not political.

Chiefs fans (if there are any left) have insisted Trump’s invite is simply a belated celebration of their team’s 2020 win, when Covid prevented such gatherings. Maybe so. But Trump — who left the 2025 Championship game in the third quarter, when it was crystal clear his team was about to take the L and our team was gonna bask in confetti — is drawn to the Chiefs for perhaps the dorkiest of reasons.

The President of the United States likes Kansas City because … their quarterback’s wife once clicked a heart on a MAGA post on Instagram. Somehow, this matters deeply to the leader of the free world. Boyle, on the other hand, has stuck with his hometown teams through the “lean years,” including a particularly abysmal stretch of Phillies performances from about 1984 to 1999, when he graduated from Notre Dame.

“I literally laughed out loud when I saw that President Trump was going to invite his favorite team, the Kansas City Chiefs, even though the Eagles royally kicked their asses in the Super Bowl.” — U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle

For this reason, he says, nothing about his pro-Birds, anti-Trump statement was politically strategic, even though his bleeding-green district has been trending red as of late — and even though it can’t hurt for a local Democrat to point out that the man at the top of the Republican Party openly hates on both Philly and our NFL team — who are, perhaps the one group Phiadelphians all agree on.

Back before the Super Bowl, Penn positive psychology author and expert Suzie Pillegi Pawelski reminded us, “love of our sports teams really connects us, despite our differences.” Could the Birds be the wedge issue that drives wayward Philadelphians back toward the Democrats?

Boyle doubts it. But he’s not discounting what our home teams can accomplish off the field. To him, Philly sports are more than just a lifelong passion or a welcome distraction from the current federal chaos. Sports can work miracles during dark and divided times.

“Imagine what it would do for this city, if, for the first time ever, in the same year, we had the Super Bowl champions and the World Series champions. That is something that would incredibly excite and unify all Philadelphians and all people in and around the city, regardless of one’s politics, race …”

Now that would be something to make a statement about.

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