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Tom Brady Details Friendship With Donald Trump, Complications Of Politics

BOSTON (CBS) -- Thanks to a friendship dating back to 2002 and a bright red hat placed inside his locker by his boss, Tom Brady will always be associated as a supporter of Donald Trump, the politician. On Wednesday, Brady seemed to indicate that he wishes that was not the case.

During an interview with Howard Stern, Brady was asked about his relationship with the president of the United States. Stern related to Brady by saying that he had always been friends with Trump back when Trump was merely a celebrity. Yet when Trump asked Stern (a Hillary Clinton supporter) to speak at the Republican National Convention in 2016, Stern had to decline, thus complicating his relationship with Trump.

Brady, who's golfed with Trump and had a "Make America Great Again" hat placed in his locker in 2016, could relate.

"Yeah well, [Trump] wanted me to speak at that convention too. And I wasn't going to do anything political," Brady told Stern.

Brady detailed that he met Trump in 2002, after winning his first Super Bowl. Trump asked Brady to judge a Miss USA competition and then would regularly ask Brady to play golf. It was only when Trump became a politician that the relationship got complicated.

"He just in a way, he would call me after games. 'I watched your game, Tom. Let's play golf together.' So 2003, 2004, that was kind of the way it was," Brady explained. "He always had a way of connecting with people and still does. But now the whole political aspect came and I think I got brought into a lot of those things because it was so polarizing around the election time. It was uncomfortable to me because you can't undo things, not that I would undo a friendship."

Brady added: "I didn't want to get into all the political, because 50 percent of the people feel … there's zero win in anything with regard to that. It's politics."

Questions about that relationship led to Brady abruptly stepping away from the podium during a press conference and later dodging questions whenever asked about Trump or his policies. Meanwhile, Brady's decision to skip the Patriots' White House visit in 2017 reportedly angered the president, who did not mention Brady once when discussing the Patriots' comeback from a 28-3 deficit in Super Bowl LI. Previously, the president was reportedly disappointed that Brady had "distanced himself."

More recently, the president offered a positive comment on Brady, with Trump calling Brady "a great guy" during a coronavirus press briefing in late March.

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