Report: Donald Trump Disappointed Tom Brady Has 'Distanced Himself'
By Michael Hurley, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- At this very moment, things are going pretty well for Tom Brady. His Instagram feed is a steady stream of family photos, and he's the front-runner for NFL MVP as the leader of the 10-2 Patriots. At age 40, everything is going right for Brady.
Everything, that is, except for his relationship with the president of the United States.
In a near-4,500-word profile of Donald Trump that ran in The New York Times over the weekend, writers Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman included a line that indicated the Patriots quarterback has somewhat fallen out of contact with the president.
"Mr. Trump still takes shots at Mark Cuban, a fellow rich-guy reality star, and expresses disappointment that Tom Brady, the New England Patriots quarterback, has distanced himself," the story said.
Brady, you'll remember, was linked closely with Trump during the lead-up to last November's election. A "Make America Great Again" hat was seen by reporters in Brady's locker in 2015, which the quarterback said was a gift placed there by RKK -- aka Patriots owner and friend of Trump, Robert Kraft. Brady deflected when asked if he'd vote for Trump, but said that Trump had always been kind to him going back to the beginning of Brady's days as a famous quarterback.
"I hope so. That would be great," Brady said of Trump's chances in September of 2015. Brady called the hat a "nice keepsake" and said that if Trump were to win the presidency, "There'd be a putting green on the White House lawn, I'm sure of that."
Later in that 2015, Brady refused to answer one way or another when asked if he supported Trump's candidacy, and he also walked away from the podium at the end of a press conference instead of answering a question last fall about Trump's infamous "locker room talk." And in November, around the time of election, Gisele Bundchen -- Brady's wife -- responded to a comment on Instagram, indicating that she was not supportive of Trump. Brady also said his wife advised him to no longer discuss politics in a public setting.
In January, on the eve of his inauguration, Trump told a crowd -- which included Kraft -- that Brady had called him to offer congratulations. When asked to verify Trump's story, Brady once again refused to answer.
When the Super Bowl-champion Patriots made their trip to the White House in April, Brady was noticeably absent. It was obvious, too, when Trump did not mention Brady's name once during his remarks on the South Lawn, despite Brady's historic MVP performance being a rather significant part of the team's Super Bowl win.
And this September, after Trump said he would force every "son of a bitch" who protested during the national anthem to get "off the field," Brady said he disagreed with Trump's comment.
Back in January, Trump was reportedly thankful to have "friends like Tom Brady [who] are loyal and can ignore the shrapnel, the verbal shrapnel." That feeling has, according to the New York Times, dissipated.
However, Trump took to Twitter on Monday morning to refute many of the details in the story.
Though Trump didn't mention the Brady detail specifically -- again, it was a very lengthy and detailed story -- it's clear the president doesn't agree with many of the tales told by the Times.