Antonio Brown and Le’Veon Bell’s endorsements of Donald Trump are right on brand
Multiple truths can exist at once in any given situation. They do in the curious case of former Pittsburgh Steelers greats Antonio Brown and Le’Veon Bell’s recent foray into politics to support GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump. It’s true that both sit on the opposite sides of the spectrum from Steelers icons and NFL Hall of Famers “Mean” Joe Greene and Jerome Bettis and F. “Dok” Harris, the son of the late Franco Harris, who all voiced their support for Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris. Indeed, the Pittsburgh Steelers offense hasn’t been nearly as explosive since days when Brown, the former All-Pro wide receiver, and Bell, the former All-Pro running back, left the franchise for their own separate yet controversial reasons. And it’s true that during playing time in Pittsburgh, the two combined for 1,149 total catches. None of those receptions resulted in either Brown or Bell catching a clue.
Simply put, Brown and Bell are the 2024 installment of Diamond and Silk.
Brown and Bell joined Trump on the campaign trail last weekend in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, as the campaign entered its final days. Brown also held a voter registration drive in the state — which many experts view as the key to either Trump or Harris’ path to the White House next month. Brown’s decision to insert himself into the election cycle is his right. He is a notable (and infamous) figure, and the art of celebrity endorsement nowadays comes with varying degrees of cachet. This is the logical way to view the situation. This is, of course, an illogical situation.
During a campaign rally in Atlanta last week, Trump said that Black and Hispanic people who didn’t vote for him “gotta have your head examined.” The irony is that within the last week, Trump has brought not only Brown and Bell on stage with him but also former five-division boxing champion Thomas “The Hitman” Hearns. The latter’s slurred speech has worsened over the years, presumably from head trauma.
Calling Brown or Bell “sellouts” is unfair. That comes with the belief they’ve ever cared about the Black community enough not to ignore when someone is hustling it to begin with. Listing all the examples of Trump’s history with racism isn’t even the main point, but these examples have all occurred in the last month. He continues to torment the five Black and Hispanic men known as the Exonerated Five, blaming them for the 1989 gang rape of a female jogger in Central Park they didn’t commit. (Trump, at the time, took out full-page newspaper ads calling for the teenagers to be executed. He has never apologized.) On a Bussin’ With the Boys podcast episode released Oct. 14, Trump said he quit football because he was scared of playing guys from “bad neighborhoods.” If schools insist on teaching about slavery, he said recently, they would no longer be funded under his new administration, and the Department of Education would cease to exist. And in an interview with Fox News, despite being fact-checked, Trump refused to walk back baseless comments he and his running mate J.D. Vance made about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, kidnapping and eating pets. (Brown is from Miami, home to the largest Haitian community in America.)
Why Brown is lending his support to Trump is obvious. It’s not for any policy or moral high ground. It’s for access to the proximity of power. It’s because hatred is a means of upward mobility for some. And despite many pieces of proposed legislation that would directly and negatively affect people who look like Brown (namely Project 2025), he couldn’t care less.
“I’d be the man in the office. The House of Representatives or something,” Brown told the Daily Mail while passing out Trump-Vance Steeler-themed “Terrible Towels” before the Steelers/New York Jets game Sunday night. “Trump’s going to put me in the Senate.”
Whether he was serious or not, Brown should research how, after helping campaign in the hotly contested 1968 presidential election, Wilt Chamberlain, then the world’s most famous pro basketball player, quickly understood how much he had been used as a puppet for Black approval that would never arrive in significant waves anyway. Then-President Richard Nixon would send cards for great games. But Chamberlain said in his memoir he “had about as much opportunity to influence [Nixon] as I have to influence the pope.”
If it was Brown who bathed in ignorance — the chief personality trait in his public persona, much like Trump — Bell’s wardrobe was just as pathetic. Bell donned a shirt over the weekend with the phrase “Trump or the Tramp.” Again, much like Brown, he’s well within his right to support Trump. But choosing to openly disrespect the vice president, a Black woman, is par for the course in terms of the energy and the behavior that comes with the groundswell of support for Trump. It’s not about politics because that discourse was never the goal. Destructive like-mindedness is. Similar moral character is. Hyper-pervasive masculinity is.
Bell would never wear or support a shirt that donned “Harris vs. Deadbeat Dads,” which Trump, Bell, and Brown have all been accused of being. Brown was arrested last year for failure to pay child support payments, and in 2021, Bell was blasted by one of the six mothers of his seven children as the “worst f—ing human on the planet.” Or maybe “Harris vs. Sexual Predators” as Trump and Brown have been labeled of in the past. Or perhaps “Harris vs. Failed Sports Executives” because Trump’s tortuous USFL tenure was still better than whatever it is (or was) Brown was supposed to accomplish as president at rapper Kanye West’s Donda Sports agency.
This is a classic example of opportunists linking with other opportunists to increase their opportunities. Only, though, one side gains anything of significance. It’s difficult to envision a scenario where an undecided voter allows Brown or Bell to be the sources who convince them to lean toward a specific candidate. Regardless, it gives Trump two additional celebrity pawns on his warped worldview of a chessboard. He collects two more voices in the small yet uniquely loud segment of Black men who support Trump — potentially a vital voter bloc in next month’s election. As for Brown and Bell, optics paint a picture of these two former football greats failing to pick up on the political blitz. Just as likely, too, they know they’re being hustled, but the thought that someone of similar character could once again be president of the United States is enough confirmation never to change their ways.
Hopefully, for their time and dedication to the campaign trial, Brown and Bell at least get a large fry from McDonald’s out of the deal. Then again, repaying debts isn’t exactly their candidate’s most redeeming quality.