Joe Biden’s campaign has been caught making an embarrassing mistake in attacking Donald Trump for his dismissal of the NFL as “boring,” with a social media post showing the president holding an Australian football.
The Threads post coincided with Thursday night’s NFL draft and included clips in which Trump called football “boring as hell” and said “nobody cares” about the country’s most popular sport.
Those images contrast with a series of photos showing Biden welcoming the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs to the White House, receiving a ball with his name on it from the Air Force team — and finally posing with a red football in his hands.
The attack ends with the words: “Make the right choice in November.”
Biden Harris campaign post contrasts vision of Trump destroying the NFL with images of the president meeting the Super Bowl champion Kansas Chiefs (photo)
However, it also ends with the above shot of Biden holding an Australian Rules football – which looks nothing like the pigskin used in the American game.
The ball in the last image is used in Australian Rules football and the photo was taken as the Commander-in-Chief watched a match down under in July 2016, when he was still Vice President.
Footballs used in the sport’s top competition, the Australian Football League (AFL), look nothing like those used in the NFL.
In addition to the completely different color, they are noticeably larger and have rounded ends, as opposed to the pointed shape of the American balls.
Trump has been vocal in his criticism of the state of the NFL, and the post appears to reference comments he made at a campaign rally in Nevada in September 2020, on the first Sunday of that football season.
‘Football is incredibly boring. It’s just not the same, right?’ he told the crowd in Henderson, saying that while Americans used to ask for events not to be scheduled while there were games, “now they’re saying, ‘Can you maybe do that during a football game?’
Trump has long been a critic of the NFL, lashing out over issues such as players taking a knee during the national anthem (pictured)
The 45th president (pictured with NFL stars Joe Burrow, center, and Nick Bosa, right, at a recent UFC event) has been criticizing the league since the 1980s
The attack also references what Trump said that same year at a rally in Carson City, when he told his supporters, “No one cares about football. They have to get smart because they can’t win this war. We want people who love our country.”
Trump has criticized the league for players taking a knee during the national anthem and called for stars who protest to be fired or suspended.
His criticism of the NFL goes back to the 1980s, when he owned the New Jersey Generals team in the leading USFL group. He also tried to buy the Buffalo Bills in 2014.
Biden’s visit to the match between Carlton Blues and West Coast Eagles came during a lightning visit to Australia.
Biden is pictured taking part in an Australian Football League match in Melbourne in July 2016, where he looked confused as the league’s then boss Gillon McLachlan (right) tried to explain the rules to him.
The president made headlines with this tweet shortly after the Chiefs won this year’s Super Bowl, implying that he and Taylor Swift conspired to ensure Kansas City won the game.
He was joined by the country’s foreign minister and the AFL’s CEO at the country’s most famous stadium, the Melbourne Cricket Ground, where he spoke to match officials and looked confused by the radically different play on the field.
Earlier this year, Biden’s campaign team made waves with a “Dark Brandon” meme, in which he and Taylor Swift hatched a plan to ensure the Chiefs won the Super Bowl.
The image showed the president with red lasers for eyes, with the name coming from a meme that originally started as a right-wing slogan: “Let’s Go Brandon” — coded as a replacement for “F*** Joe Biden.”
The president tweeted the image with the caption “exactly as we drew it” shortly after the Chiefs’ win over the San Francisco 49ers in February.
The president seemingly leaned on claims from Republican commentators that Swift — who is dating lead star Travis Kelce — is a plant being used to influence the 2024 elections for Democrats.