During Super Bowl LIX, President Donald Trump wasn’t the focus, but Clay Travis suggests that Fox had a deliberate plan for a pregame shot of him. On his Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show podcast, he revealed that Fox timed their cut to Trump during Jon Batiste’s rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner.”
According to Travis, the founder of OutKick, a Fox Corporation-owned outlet, the network aimed to capture a moment when Batiste sang “through the perilous fight” to reference Trump’s dramatic response to the assassination attempt he faced last July in Pennsylvania, where he famously raised a fist and urged his supporters to “fight.”
.@ClayTravis reveals interesting inside Fox info: “They specifically chose to show Trump on the word ‘fight’ of the National Anthem because of the ‘fight, fight, fight’ reaction. I don’t know how many people know that. It’s super scripted every shot in the Super Bowl like that…… pic.twitter.com/jNewxoZXfe
— The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show (@clayandbuck) February 10, 2025
Travis explained, “They specifically chose to show him during the word ‘fight’ because of the ‘fight, fight, fight’ reaction. It’s superscripted, every shot in the Super Bowl like that. They went to Trump in the box. I haven’t seen anybody else point this out; I know this to be true.” Working for Fox through OutKick, which he founded and was purchased by Fox in 2021, Travis previously hosted shows such as Against All Odds and Big Noon Kickoff.
Despite Trump being the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl and his usual prominence in media, his presence was not a major element of Fox’s broadcast this time. If Travis’s claims hold, Fox possibly leveraged Trump’s appearance during the patriotic anthem to create a more impactful moment.
