RED ZONE PLAY

Trump Tries to Enlist Football Stars in Ultimate Hail Mary

The president has been leaning into football to appeal to his core voters.

Donald Trump will campaign with three former NFL players in Texas in a last-minute effort to boost Republican candidates’ election hopes in the Lone Star state.

For his stops in Lubbock and Corpus Christi on Tuesday, Trump, 80, has enlisted the support of two quarterbacks and one wide receiver, all of whom played college football in Texas, Axios reported.

Johnny Manziel, 33, won the Heisman Trophy at Texas A&M before being drafted by the Cleveland Browns; Colt McCoy, 40, was quarterback at the University of Texas, and went on to play for five NFL teams from 2010 to 2022; Danny Amendola, 40, played at Texas Tech, and later became a two-time Super Bowl champion with the New England Patriots. Manziel and Amendola were born in eastern Texas.

In campaign stops over the last few weeks, Trump has leaned into the appeal of football. Besides his first-half appearance at the Texas-Tennessee game in Knoxville in September, he interacted with four Baltimore Ravens in that city earlier this month, invited former NFL Coach Jon Gruden to rally supporters in Ohio, and did the same in Georgia with Todd Gurley, the former Georgia Bulldog and Los Angeles Ram.

Trump also keeps bringing up football in another, unconventional way: by talking about the physique of Ohio Sen. Jon Husted, who played for the University of Dayton.

“I don’t do this with men very often. I started examining his body because I didn’t know he was a great athlete, and I looked and I watched up and down,” he said Oct. 12 in Youngstown. “I looked at his a-- and I looked at the whole— and then I looked at his hands. Look at his hands. He’s got these like claws. And I got it. You are a great athlete.”

It remains to be seen whether Manziel, McCoy, or Amendola will be subjected to similar treatment.

A Trump adviser played up the appeal of football, saying it would draw in his core group of voters.

“Trump has many bases. And football is one of them, college and pros,” the adviser told Axios. “The response is good. And the president loves the atmosphere. So why not?”

Time is running out for the president to try to keep Texans from electing a Democratic senator for the first time in over three decades. The midterms are eight days away, but 4.5 million ballots have already been cast, according to The Texan. Voter data specialist Derek Ryan told the outlet that the expectation is for about 10 million voters to participate.

One of the millions of early voters was former President George W. Bush’s brother, Neil Bush, who revealed that he had made his choice: Democrat James Talarico.

“I have been a Republican for most of my life, and I still believe deeply in many traditional Republican principles,” Bush, 71, wrote in a Facebook post. “But character matters more than party affiliation.”

Also last week, a top donor to Attorney General Ken Paxton during the GOP primary, attorney Thomas Henry, shockingly announced that he would be supporting Talarico.

Polls have generally shown Talarico, 37, with a slim lead over Paxton, 63. In a CBS poll from last week, Talarico was up 51-49, but within the margin on error.

Close polls in traditionally Republican states like Texas, Kansas and Alaska have spurred Trump—and JD Vance—to play defense. On Monday, the president spoke in Mississippi, which hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1982.

The White House referred the Daily Beast to the RNC, which didn’t immediately respond.

Play Video

See more of our coverage in your search results.

ADD THE DAILY BEAST ON GOOGLE

William VaillancourtReporter

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.