Donald Trump Stamps Nick Bosa With MAGA Seal of Approval

Nick Bosa, the hard-hitting Donald Trump-supporting defensive end, was open with his political views in the past, but opted to delete them for a very specific reason.

“I had to,” he told ESPN. “There is a chance I might end up in San Francisco.”

The scrub did little to make the storyline — such as it was — to go away before the draft. Lo and behold, Bosa did go second overall to the 49ers, where he’ll encounter a far different idealogical landscape than he did in Ohio.

This is as big a story as you want to make it. Getting people to agree on this stuff is essentially impossible. What’s clear is that Trump himself breathed more oxygen into the situation with a tweet this morning congratulating Bosa.

Look, maybe this is what Bosa wanted all along. It just doesn’t seem that way. All of his public actions suggested he didn’t want to play this part of his story up. That, of course, did little to stop feverish debate between his supporters and detractors.

The president could have congratulated Bosa privately, or stopped before using his trademark MAGA phrase. That’s obviously not his style. And now Bosa can’t downplay this as easily.

If Trump is using Bosa for his own selfish reasons it wouldn’t be surprising. He also wouldn’t be the only person doing it. Countless sports-shouting segments about old tweets have been built, with both sides using this football player as an avatar.

With this new injection, there’s no reason to think it will stop. Predictably, people are pointing out that Trump congratulated Bosa but not Kyler Murray, who went first overall. A person familiar with the events of the past four years could wonder why anyone would be surprised by that, but here we are anyway.

Bosa, already under immense pressure, just felt the weight on his shoulders get a bit heavier — whether he wanted it to or not.