President Donald Trump told two New York Times reporters that New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichick made up with him on the Trump International golf course in South Florida in March 2021 after he “chickened out” and refused to accept the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riots. “Trump had run into him there on the second-to-last hole. ‘He came up to me on the seventeenth,’ the former commander-in-chief recounted with relish,” reads This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future. “Stretching credulity for anyone familiar with Belichick’s gruff persona, Trump claimed: ‘He hugged me and kissed me.’” Belichick had refused the medal back in January 2021, saying “the tragic events of last week occurred and the decision has been made not to move forward with the award. Above all, I am an American citizen with great reverence for our nation’s values, freedom and democracy.”