CONTROVERSIAL US president Donald Trump met with Philadelphia Eagles star Saquon Barkley two months after the Super Bowl.
The Eagles won the Vince Lombardi Trophy in February after beating the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 at the Ceasars Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana where POTUS was in attendance.
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Trump, 78, and Barkley, 28, exited a helicopter together on Sunday for a meeting at the president’s Trump National golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
The Republican leader then approached the media who were waiting nearby and revealed he had a great interaction with the NFL star.
Trump said: “What a nice guy he is.
He then joked about going toe to toe with the elite athlete: “I wanted to race him but I decided not to do it.”
The two linked up just a day before the Eagles’ planned visit to the White House.
Barkley’s Philadelphia team-mate Jalen Hurts hinted he will not be joining them after an awkward interview with TIME on Thursday.
Hurts issued a bizarre response when asked if he will be meeting with POTUS: “Ermmmm,” he said before staying silent, prompting an abrupt end to the interview.
Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie insisted every player would be given the choice of whether to attend or not.
This comes after the team did not visit Washington DC to celebrate winning the Super Bowl in 2018 during Trump’s first term in office.
The president canceled the event after it emerged that only a handful of players agreed to attend.
That was during Trump’s war of words with the NFL over player protests during the national anthem.
This time the meeting takes place under even more turbulent circumstances.
Trump’s tumbling approval ratings of between 39 per cent and 45 per cent are the lowest for any newly-elected president at the 100-day mark in more than seven decades, according to CNN.
This follows his controversial handling of the war in Ukraine, which he promised to end in the first 24 hours of his presidency, and his shocking tariffs which risk global recession as per many economists.
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