We didn’t see a lot of President Donald Trump during Super Bowl LIX, but Clay Travis believes Fox put much thought into one pregame camera shot of the 47th president.
Discussing Trump’s appearance at the Caesar’s Superdome for the championship game on his Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show podcast on Monday, Travis claimed that he has inside information on the timing of Fox’s cut to Trump during Jon Batiste’s rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner.”
According to Travis, the founder of Fox Corporation-owned OutKick, the network scripted the televised anthem performance to cut to Trump when Batiste sang “through the perilous fight.”
Why?
Well, according to Travis, Fox hoped to allude to Trump’s response after the assassination attempt he faced last July in Pennsylvania. The president famously raised a fist and shouted for his supporters to “fight” after avoiding a spray of bullets during a rally in Butler.
“They specifically chose to show him during the word ‘fight’ because of the ‘fight, fight, fight’ reaction,” Travis said. “It’s superscripted, every shot in the Super Bowl like that. They went to Trump in the box. I haven’t seen anybody else point this out; I know this to be true.”
Travis works for Fox through OutKick, the sports website he founded, which Fox purchased in 2021. Travis also worked for Fox Sports as a host of Against All Odds and Big Noon Kickoff until recently.
Overall, Trump was not a significant part of Fox’s Super Bowl broadcast. Given his history as the first sitting president to attend the game and the attention he tends to receive, his presence was mostly an afterthought.
Yet, if Travis is to be believed, Fox made the most of Trump’s presence during the patriotic pregame performance.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.