In a forthcoming book about the 2020 presidential election, former President Donald Trump says that New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick “chickened out” by declining to accept the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Yahoo! Sports reports.
Trump blasts Belichick’s refusal to accept the honor in an interview with New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, authors of This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future.
Trump was prepared to give the medal, one of the highest civilian honors in the country, to Belichick in January of 2021. But Belichick said he wouldn’t accept the award, citing the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection: “Subsequently, the tragic events of last week occurred and the decision has been made not to move forward with the award. Above all, I am an American citizen with great reverence for our nation’s values, freedom and democracy.”
Trump claims that Belichick later tried to make amends with him on a golf course. “He came up to me on the seventeenth,” Trump says in the book. “He hugged me and kissed me.”
There are evidently no hard feelings between the ex-president and the Pats coach. On Sunday, Belichick attended a Super Bowl party at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
This Will Not Pass is scheduled for publication by Simon and Schuster on May 3.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
