The only reason Donald Trump ran for president in 2016 was as an act of revenge against the NFL team owners, Stephen A. Smith claims.
The year was 2014 and NBC’s biggest reality television star was among three qualifying bidders in the race for outgoing owner Ralph Wilson’s Buffalo Bills.
Smith, who was already known to Trump at this time, phoned up the ESPN personality to discuss he hopes of finally becoming a team owner.
‘He called me in 2014,’ Smith told comedian Bill Maher on Club Random. ‘This is a true story.
‘He says, ”Stephen A.” — [he] had a secretary — ”Mr. Trump is on the line,” etcetera,’ Smith continued. ‘[Trump] gets on the line. He says, ”Stephen A., I’m trying to buy the Buffalo Bills.” Price tag was $1.4 billion.
Donald Trump ran for president in 2016 to get back at the NFL, Stephen A. Smith claims
Trump was rumored to be interested in the Bills, Cowboys and Colts at various times
‘He had about $1.1 billion. I was being told he wasn’t gonna get the team. He said, ”Stephen A., if these mother***ers get in my way” — talking about the NFL owners — ”these mother***ers get in my way, I’m gonna get them all back. I’m gonna run for president.” That’s what he said.’
Smith went on to accuse Trump of targeting Colin Kaepernick and other players who kneeled in protest during the national anthem ‘just to get the owners back.’ Trump’s focus on protesting players led to widespread criticism of the league, which still maintained its dominance in the ratings nonetheless.
The Bills were ultimately sold to Buffalo Sabres owners Terry and Kim Pegula – the parents of tennis star Jessica Pegula – for $1.4 billion.
Trump’s former friend and media ally Howard Stern offered a different theory in 2019, saying Trump ran for president as a ‘gimmick’ to gain leverage in contract negotiations for ‘The Apprentice’
‘I firmly believed that Donald did not want to run for president,’ Stern told Stephen Colbert. ‘I don’t think he was serious. I don’t think he wanted to be the president. I knew him. He had a great life at Mar-A-Lago, he was running around town, he played golf, he had a great time.’
Trump’s fascination with professional football resulted in several attempts at NFL ownership.
In 1983, Trump expressed an interest in buying the Baltimore Colts, who weren’t ultimately sold but were relocated to Indianapolis.
A year later, Trump had a reported chance to buy the Dallas Cowboys for just $50 million but declined, allowing Jerry Jones to acquire the franchise for $140 million. Now the Cowboys rank as the most valuable team in sports with a $9 billion valuation from Forbes.
Terry and Kim Pegula ultimately bought the Bills from Ralph Wilson for $1.4 billion
Bills players react after kicker Tyler Bass kicked the game winning field goal against Miami
Trump’s decision to pass up the Cowboys for $50 million in 1984 allowed Jerry Jones to buy the team a few years later for $140m. Dallas is now the most valuable team in sports at $9 billion
And Trump wasn’t only using money to get an NFL team. He also tried using leverage, according to Jeff Pearlman’s 2018 book, ‘Football for a Buck: The Crazy Rise and Crazier Demise of the USFL.
Launched in 1983, the USFL was a spring football league that boasted a surprising array of talent, including future Trump political ally Herschel Walker. One year into the league, Trump would buy Walker’s team, the New Jersey Generals, which he’d own until the league went bust in 1986.
The USFL’s abbreviated history is defined by several clear mistakes, like the decision to add six new franchises after a promising inaugural season in 1983. But perhaps the bigger misstep was choosing to move its season to the fall in 1985 and challenge the NFL directly – a decision that was influenced heavily by Trump.
Donald Trump owned the New Jersey Generals for three years until the USFL went bust when he pushed to move the season schedule from spring to fall
‘In the lead-up to buying the team, he was all about spring football and how great the league was, and, ‘I love what the USFL is doing and blah blah blah,’ Pearlman told DailyMail.com in 2018. ‘He gets approved as an owner, he buys the team, and immediately: ‘We need to move to fall; we need to take on the NFL.’
‘His big line was: ‘If God wanted football in the spring, he wouldn’t have invented baseball.”
According to interviews conducted by Pearlman, Trump’s initial plan was to have the USFL fold and the NFL absorb the Generals as an expansion franchise.
However, during a meeting with then-NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle in New York City’s Pierre Hotel in 1984, that plan was foiled.
‘He basically said to Rozelle,’ Pearlman explained, ”I don’t really give a s*** about the USFL. I want an NFL team. What do I have to do to get in the NFL?”
‘It was basically an offer to throw the USFL under the bus.’
Trump did not get the answer he was looking for.
‘Rozelle said to him, ‘As long as I’m the commissioner, you’re never going to have a team,” Pearlman continued. ‘He didn’t trust him. He thought he was a scumbag. He didn’t say, ‘I think you’re a scumbag,’ but Rozelle made his feelings toward Trump very well known. [Rozelle] also made them well known during the trial when he testified.’
Late NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle reportedly told Trump he would never own a league team
That testimony came about in 1986 after Trump had convinced his fellow USFL owners to file an anti-monopoly lawsuit against the NFL.
When called to the stand, Trump had claimed that Rozelle promised him an NFL franchise at that 1984 meeting if he could persuade the USFL to stick with a spring schedule and refrain from filing the antitrust suit.
Rozelle testified that Trump’s claim was untrue, but one former USFL owner used a different term to describe the real estate mogul’s testimony.
‘I got an email from another USFL owner,’ said Pearlman. ‘And this is a guy that actually voted for Trump – and he said to me: ‘I read the book. I wish you would have talked more about how Trump lied under oath because that always pissed me off.’
According to Pearlman, Trump had assured his fellow owners that the USFL would win the suit, pointing to his choice of notorious former Senator Joseph McCarthy attorney Roy Cohn. Technically Trump was right, the NFL lost, but the USFL’s efforts were ultimately doomed by several costly errors.
‘One of the other owners, Jerry Argovitz of the Houston Gamblers, begged Trump not to file the suit in New York,’ Pearlman said. ‘He said [the jury] wouldn’t be sympathetic to plaintiffs… Trump says: ‘No, no, New York’s my home town. I know it well.”
Trump was apparently wrong.
Even before the jury decided to reduce the settlement to $1, Trump’s testimony and even his presence in the courtroom seemed to irk one juror.
‘I interviewed one of the jurors,’ Pearlman said. ‘She was saying how Trump was just the worst witness of all time.
‘The whole goal of the USFL was to paint the NFL as the bully,’ Pearlman continued. ‘Trump goes on the stand and he’s a bully, he’s a thug. She told me she vividly remembered Trump trying to intimidate the jurors from the stand by staring them down.
Philadelphia Daily News’s Paul Domowitch also reported Trump’s anthem habits in the USFL
There’s another peculiar allegation from Trump’s time in the USFL: He was accused of sitting during the national anthem.
‘I’m sure sometimes Trump stood and sometimes he didn’t stand, but it’s just funny that he’s calling out all these guys for kneeling during the anthem when it was well known – and not even a big deal – that Donald Trump would sit during the anthems,’ Pearlman told the Daily Mail in 2018.
‘[He would] do work, take calls, conduct interviews,’ Pearlman continued. ‘Probably never gave it a second thought.’ (This claim echoes that of the Philadelphia Daily News’s Paul Domowitch, who Tweeted in May that he once saw Trump spend ‘the entire anthem berating’ the president of the USFL’s Philadelphia Stars.)
Trump’s White House did not respond to DailyMail.com’s request for comment on the allegation at the time of the book’s publication.
