All doubts and concerns regarding the Eagles’ visit to the White House have finally been exiled after a spokesperson for the team and a presidential official confirmed the team’s acceptance of the President’s invite.
In honor of their 40-22 win over Kansas City Chiefs over a month ago, as is customary of Super Bowl-winning teams, the Eagles were invited to the White House to meet the President of the United States with the Vince Lombardi Trophy.
Eagles set to visit White House
A White House official confirmed the news that the Eagles “enthusiastically accepted” the President’s invite and would be visiting 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue at a date and time that is yet to be communicated.”We sent the invite and they enthusiastically accepted. We are working with them to determine a date and logistics,” the official confirmed.
The Eagles’ visit to the White House became a bone of contention as a result of the events that followed their first Super Bowl win in 2018, while Donald Trump was serving his first term.
Despite their 41-33 victory over New England Patriots at Super Bowl LII, several Eagles players shunned the idea of visiting the White House following the NFL’s ban on players kneeling or making other protest gestures during the national anthem – a trend President Trump had earlier criticized and labelled as unpatriotic.
At the end, it was mutual: the players were unwilling to visit and the President rescinded his invitation as well. Well, history did repeat itself on February 9, a few weeks after President Donald Trump’s swearing-in as the 47th democratic president of the United States of America, as the Eagles became the first team to win the Super Bowl upon Trump’s re-election.
Interestingly, President Trump was present to watch them thump Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 and immediately extended his invite.
“They will be. We haven’t yet but we will be. I thought it was a great performance by them and absolutely they’ll be extended that invitation. We’ll do that right away. We’re going to do it sometime today. They deserve to be down here and we hope to see them.”
With this, Trump disappointed those that were looking to raise speculations and make headlines out of the rift between himself and the Eagles. Clearly, the sun has set on the events that followed Super Bowl LII and a new dawn has begun. “Enthusiastically,” the Eagles and the whole of Philadelphia awaits this history-making visit — it’s the first time the Eagles will be visiting the President of the United States of America with the Vince Lombardi Trophy.
Photo by Kevin Sabitus/Getty Images
