Robert Kraft, Patriots Gave Trump Super Bowl Ring As Gift

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft didn’t just give President Donald Trump a personalized jersey when the team visited the White House in April to celebrate their Super Bowl LI victory.

Patriots White House Super Bowl Victory Visit News

According to several new reports, the Patriots also gave Trump a Super Bowl ring as a way to thank him for letting them visit 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on April 19.

The team confirmed the reports to Comcast Sportsnet New England.

According to The Hill, a team spokesman said the President received a customized ring similar to the one the team received. Inscribed on the inside of this ring are the words we are all Patriots” and “greatest comeback ever,” a reference to the Patriots’ surprise come-from-behind win against the Atlanta Falcons in this year’s Super Bowl in Houston in February.

Kraft, Patriots head coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady are all reportedly longtime friends of Trump.

Rules against presidents receiving gifts prohibit Trump from accepting items worth more than $350. According to the Patriots’ spokesman, the ring will be kept in Trump’s presidential library.

Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci — who was fired after ten days following revelations of a profanity-laced tirade about other Trump staffers he relayed to New Yorker reporter Ryan Lizza — first mentioned the Trump ring in a conversation on Twitter. Scaramucci revealed in the exchange that he is a “Kraft family fan,” although he supports the New York Jets, not the Patriots.

According to CSNNE, Trump “hoped to put the ring on display.”

It is unknown how much the Patriots paid for Trump’s new piece of jewelry. The team’s 2015 Super Bowl rings cost $36,500 each.

As mentioned in Scaramucci’s Twitter conversation, Russian President Vladimir Putin also owns a Patriots Super Bowl ring. Putin accidentally ended up with the team’s ring from their third national title win following the 2004 season.

Kraft explained all of this to NFL.com:

“[The Super Bowl rings] are all in a drawer except for my third one. The original is in Russia with the president of the country. I happened to be there on a business mission with my friend Sandy Weill. We had just given out our rings. I showed Sandy my ring, and he said, ‘Why don’t you show it to the president?’ And I showed it to him and he put it on, and he sort of just enjoyed it, so he kept it on.”

The Patriots owner described events from that trip differently in a separate interview in 2013:

“I took out the ring and showed it to [Putin], and he put it on and he goes, ‘I can kill someone with this ring.’ I put my hand out and he put it in his pocket, and three KGB guys got around him and walked out.”

As Scaramucci stated, Putin never returned that ring.

Several Patriots chose to skip this year’s White House visit for a variety reasons: some said they had done it before and were simply not interested, while others openly stated they declined the opportunity because they reject Trump and his policies. Brady missed the trip due to “family reasons,” which were likely related to his mother suffering from cancer.

WASHINGTON, DC – APRIL 19: New England Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick (L) and team owner Robert Kraft (R) present a football helmet to U.S. President Donald Trump during a celebration of the team’s Super Bowl victory on the South Lawn at the White House April 19, 2017 in Washington, DC. It was the team’s fifth Super Bowl victory since 1960. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Article by Pablo Mena

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