Martellus Bennett helped the New England Patriots win a Super Bowl championship on Sunday, but he will not be joining the team on their visit to the White House to be honored by President Donald Trump later this year.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t thought about it,\u201d the Patriots\u2019 tight end told reporters after the game. \u201cBut I\u2019m not going to go. Nah.\u201d<\/p>\n
When pressed about his reasoning, Bennett explained, \u201cI\u2019m just not going to come. I mean, I\u2019ll elaborate later on in life, but like right now, I\u2019m just trying to enjoy this right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bennett has been an outspoken supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement and criticized Kanye West\u2019s visit with Trump, tweeting, \u201cSo Kanye didn\u2019t take the time to vote. And he holding on to Trumps coattail like Peter Pettigrew to Lord Voldemort.\u201d Bennett was also photographed raising a fist during the national anthem earlier this season, which many took to be a show of solidarity with San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick who received a backlash for kneeling during the anthem.<\/p>\n
Bennett hinted at his reluctance to visit Trump at the White House last week according to the Detroit Free Press<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know. I\u2019ve got to win the Super Bowl first, but most likely no,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t\u2014that\u2019s not\u2014I don\u2019t support the guy that\u2019s in the house.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n Bennett\u2019s stance puts him at odds with Patriots owner Robert Kraft, coach Bill Belichik, and quarterback Tom Brady, who Trump counts among his supporters. During the campaign, Trump read from a letter of support sent to him by Belichick and quoted from a purported phone call with Brady. A \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d hat was spotted in Brady\u2019s locker in September. Yesterday, the President tweeted, \u201cWhat an amazing comeback and win by the Patriots. Tom Brady, Bob Kraft and Coach B\u00a0are total winners. Wow!\u201d<\/p>\n Yesterday, Bennett made it clear that he was not worried about potential repercussions with the Patriots management. \u201cI\u2019m not really worried about that. I\u2019m not worried about it all,\u201d he explained to reporters. \u201cWhatever I wanna do, they believe in that. So I ain\u2019t really worried about that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Martellus Bennett helped the New England Patriots win a Super Bowl championship on Sunday, but he will not be joining the team on their visit to the White House to be honored by President Donald Trump later this year. \u201cI haven\u2019t thought about it,\u201d the Patriots\u2019 tight end told reporters after the game. \u201cBut I\u2019m…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}