The Athletic has live coverage of Chiefs vs Eagles in Super Bowl LIX, and Kendrick Lamar’s halftime performance.

Appearing for a pregame interview hours before he becomes the first sitting U.S. president to attend a Super Bowl, President Donald Trump predicted the Kansas City Chiefs to defeat the Philadelphia Eagles in New Orleans on Sunday night.

In an interview with Bret Baier that aired on Fox’s Super Bowl pregame show, Trump praised Chiefs star Patrick Mahomes, calling him a “great, great quarterback” and a player who “really knows how to win.” The president also called out Mahomes’ wife, Brittany, for being “a phenomenal wife” and a fan of Make America Great Again, the movement many of Trump’s supporters have rallied behind.

Mahomes, 29, is the first quarterback to start five Super Bowls before the age of 30. He and the Chiefs are looking for a three-peat victory at the Super Bowl, a run no team in NFL history has accomplished.

The Chiefs won back-to-back Lombardi Trophies, in 2023 over the Eagles and in 2024 over the San Francisco 49ers.

Before that, Kansas City and a 24-year-old Mahomes started their dynasty with a victory over the 49ers in the 2019 Super Bowl. They returned to the Super Bowl the following year but lost to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Tom Brady.

In Sunday’s interview, Trump wasn’t only focused on the Chiefs. He said the Eagles have a “great quarterback,” though he did not name Jalen Hurts in the portion of the interview aired during the Fox pregame show. Trump also dubbed 2024 Offensive Player of the Year Saquon Barkley “a great running back.”

When asked about athletes imitating his dance moves at political rallies, Trump said he did not expect that to happen. “I try and walk off (stage) sometimes without dancing and I can’t. I have to dance because it’s just got something special about it.”

49ers defensive end Nick Bosa, a noted Trump supporter, started the trend in Week 10 when he celebrated a sack against the Buccaneers by imitating Trump’s dance of pumping his fists and swaying his hips. A few of Bosa’s teammates joined him in the celebration, which came the weekend after Trump’s re-election as president.

UFC fighter Jon Jones kept the trend going at UFC 309 in mid-November, when he danced in front of Trump. Other NFL players followed suit the same weekend, including the Detroit Lions’ Za’Darius Smith, the Las Vegas Raiders’ Brock Bowers and the Tennessee Titans’ Calvin Ridley.

The clip that aired, with Fox News promising to share more of Baier’s interview with Trump on Monday, did not include discussion of Trump’s tension with NFL players during his first term. Trump strongly objected then to athletes kneeling during “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and escalated that with NFL players when he said team owners should “get that son of a b—- off the field” if they protested. That prompted a wave of criticism from players.

Trump mostly focused more on other elements of politics besides sports during his interview with Baier, but he acknowledged the executive order he signed Wednesday to stop transgender athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s sports unless they were assigned female at birth.

“I just signed a bill allowing for women not to have to be punished by men in sports,” Trump said.

The order promised to deny federal funding to high schools and colleges that do not comply.

One day later, the NCAA changed its policy on transgender athlete participation and said it would limit competition in women’s sports to only student-athletes assigned female at birth.

The U.S. Department of Education said the same day that it would launch investigations into San Jose State University and the University of Pennsylvania — as well as the governing body for Massachusetts high school sports — over what it said were “apparent Title IX violations” related to transgender women playing women’s sports.

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(Photo: Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)