Trump tackles NFL rules rather than politics in latest podcast appearance

Former President Donald Trump grappled with several football topics on Bussin' With The Boys, a Barstool Sports podcast hosted by former NFL players Taylor Lewan and Will Compton.

The podcast, which football fans regularly watch in hopes they can catch analysis from the football veterans, could be another attempt from Trump to garner favor from voters who value the game.

The appearance comes two weeks after Trump attended a Georgia-Alabama game that averaged 12 million viewers on ABC and ESPN's streaming platforms, according to Nielsen. While Trump has hardly shied away from podcast spots, it's the first time he has been on a podcast that slanted toward football.

And Trump used it as an opportunity to muse on NFL rules, including a new kickoff rule that forces most of the players on the field to be motionless until a kicker booms the ball to a returner's hands or elsewhere. Some observers of the game have criticized the rule for the odd pause as players used to run down the field toward the returner or to block.

"I think it's terrible," Trump said after Compton asked him about the rule. "What are they doing?" the former president said before asking if the hosts believe that college football will integrate a similar rule.

President Trump is NOT a fan of the new NFL kickoff rules. @BussinWTB pic.twitter.com/Nj9Td4kuF6

Compton believes the college game will, but Lewan explained that the two tiers of football have different rules, such as the difference between an NFL and a college catch in-bounds. In the NFL, a player needs two feet in-bounds to have a successful catch, while in college, a player only needs one.

Trump said he believed the NFL should adopt college football's one-foot rule.

"I think the one foot is a good idea because it's too complicated," Trump said. "If you didn't have slow motion ... in the old days, they didn't have that."

The hosts then asked what football position Trump played. He said he was a tight end, a position known for both catching passes and blocking defensive players.

"I could catch the ball good, but I didn't particularly like having some guy that was lifting weights all day long and came from a bad neighborhood, and he sees me ... they were tackling hard," Trump said.

"I had a quarterback without much of an arm," Trump observed. "I didn't like it too much."

Trump also brought up the Olympic boxing match between Algerian boxer Imane Khelif and Italian boxer Angela Carini in which the latter quit the bout 46 seconds in. Khelif, who is a woman, has been accused of being transgender.

"They want men playing in women's sports," Trump said right before bringing up the match. "[Carini] is fighting a man," he said before Compton interjected that many fighters train to take punches. "So, in, other words, she should have gotten the s*** knocked out of her," Trump responded to Compton's insistence that Carini should've stayed in the ring.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: "They want men playing in women's sports. I don't think I could ever say I'm thrilled about that. I've seen people really hurt. In the Olympics... you saw the young Italian girl... she said 'I just got hit by a horse. I can't take it.'" pic.twitter.com/M0FfkgoIJX

The hosts then concluded the two-hour interview, recorded on Monday and released the day after, a bit over 10 minutes after Trump's comments. The interview has around 42,000 views on YouTube as of Tuesday evening.

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Trump has a personal history with the NFL. He most recently tried to buy the Buffalo Bills in 2014 after several other tries at owning an NFL team but lost out to Terry and Kim Pegula. He briefly commented on it on the podcast, saying he was "not close" to buying the team but that Terry is a "very good man" who made a "great pick" with Bills quarterback Josh Allen. The Republican presidential candidate previously owned the New Jersey Generals of the defunct United States Football League.

The Washington Examiner reached out to the Trump campaign for comment but did not receive a response.