Tom Brady’s One Friend Revealed and You’ll Never Guess Who It Is
Hint: They both live in Florida
On behalf of all of Gawker, I would like to formally apologize to Tom Brady for a headline we ran on October 13. It read “Tom Brady Has No Friends.” The subsequent article detailed the TB12 gossip of the day, which was that the quarterback had been left friendless in the wake of his crumbling marriage to Gisele Bündchen. It turns out that we did not have all the information at the time and that Brady does in fact have one friend: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Yes, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers QB has been upgraded from friendless loser to friend-having loser thanks to a report in the New York Times. Tim Michels, the Republican candidate for governor in Wisconsin, blabbed about the besties at a gathering of the far-right Lake Country Patriots last Thursday.
“I took Governor DeSantis to the Packer game at Lambeau Field,” Michels said. “We’re sitting there, you know, we’re watching the game and all of a sudden, I look over and he’s texting and he says, ‘How do you spell Lambeau?’”
Oh the early stages of platonic courtship! Texting a new friend, not wanting to look stupid as you talk about their interests (football stadiums), checking with third party to make sure you don’t look like a fool. If it wasn’t obvious, Gov. DeSantis was texting Brady.
“I say, ‘Who are you texting with?’ He says, ‘I’m texting with Tom Brady,’” Michels told the crowd. “The governor of Florida gets to text with Tom Brady.”
Beyond the fact that they both currently live in Florida and probably want to leave (DeSantis to the White House, Brady to an NFL team that won’t lose to the Carolina Panthers), what do these two have in common?
Well, they both had close connections to former President Donald Trump and have distanced themselves in recent years. Brady famously had a MAGA hat in his locker in 2015 and, when asked about it, said that Trump “obviously appeals to a lot of people, and he’s a hell of a lot of fun to play golf with.” Bündchen would go on to adamantly claim that the couple were not supporting Trump’s bid for presidency in 2016, while Brady declined to say who he was supporting. DeSantis, once a favorite of Trump’s, has fallen out of the president’s good graces as it becomes more obvious that he will be running for president in 2024.
That’s not all the two share. DeSantis served in the Navy and was deployed to Iraq, which Brady sort of thinks is the same thing as playing professional football. They both have three children. And they both have faces that make you say, “He looks like that now? Time comes for us all, I guess.” It’s a match made in scary-guy heaven, but we’re happy Tom has at least some support in this difficult time.
