How Donald Trump and Patriots owner Robert Kraft became friends

Editor's note: This story was originally published in February 2019.

As planners prepare for Sunday's Super Bowl, related plane trips have been on the itinerary for two billionaires with strong Palm Beach ties, whose friendship solidified during the personal tragedy that one of them endured nearly a decade ago.

President Donald Trump is scheduled to fly into Palm Beach International Airport this evening for a Super Bowl weekend at Mar-a-Lago, while New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, no doubt, will be in Atlanta for Sunday’s game against the Los Angeles Rams.

Shortly after Trump’s inauguration two years ago, Bob Kraft had nothing but nice things to say about Trump — like him, a part-time Palm Beacher — in an interview with the New York Daily News.

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The two men, Kraft said, forged a stronger friendship when Kraft’s philanthropist wife of nearly 50 years, Myra, died of cancer in 2011 at 68. Her death devastated Kraft, and Trump and his wife, Melania, who is today first lady, expressed a continuing concern for him and his family.

“When Myra died, Melania and Donald came up to the funeral in our synagogue, then they came for memorial week to visit with me,” Kraft told writer Gary Myers in January 2017. “Then he called me once a week for the whole year, the most depressing year of my life when I was down and out. He called me every week to see how I was doing, invited me to things, tried to lift my spirits. He was one of five or six people that were like that. I remember that.”

On Friday in an interview with Fox News, Kraft was asked if he had received any recent advice from the president.

“I have a lot of people who give me advice, and he’s been very supportive and I know he’s working very hard to serve the best interests of the country,” Kraft told Fox's Brian Kilmeade.

According to records kept by the Federal Election Commission, Kraft made a donation $1 million to help pay for the president’s inauguration. The Patriots owner also was a guest at a pre-inauguration dinner with Trump.

And a few months later, Boston’s KBZ-TV reported that Kraft and the Patriots presented Trump with a commemorative Super Bowl ring during a visit to the White House to celebrate their 2017 win.

Longtime Democrat

Yet the strength of their friendship has puzzled many observers, since Kraft is a longtime Democrat, Myers wrote in the New York Daily News.

Kraft also is on the record for being “deeply disappointed by the tone” of remarks Trump made in September 2017, when the president repeatedly blasted NFL players who knelt during the national anthem as a way to protest the treatment of racial minorities in the country. The president also was sharply critical of the league’s response to the players, suggesting that players who knelt should be fired. He also suggested attendees at games walk out of the stadium in protest “when somebody disrespects our flag.”

Kraft last April released a statement, saying that “players are intelligent, thoughtful and care deeply about our community and I support their right to peacefully affect social change and raise awareness in a manner that they feel is most impactful.”

The NFL’s policy today is that players who don’t want to stand remain in the locker room until the national anthem has been played or sung.

Even so, Kraft and Trump have plenty in common — and not just the fact that both regularly find themselves on Forbes.com’s annual list of the richest Americans.

Both men have spent plenty of time during the winter on the island, with Trump traveling here on his private jet from New York City, just as Kraft and his wife did on theirs.

The Krafts divided their time between homes in Brookline, Mass., Cape Cod and Palm Beach, and Kraft today resides in a double apartment on oceanfront Breakers Row during trips to the island.

The two men’s friendship predates Myra Kraft’s death, and Kraft attended the Trumps’ Palm Beach wedding in 2009 at The Episcopal Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea. Trump, in fact, met the Krafts 20 years ago, according to a 2013 story in The Boston Globe, which mentioned that the two men had carried out “philanthropic work together in Palm Beach.”

“They had an amazing marriage, and Bob was devastated when she died,” Trump told the Globe. “He suffered greatly for a year, and he still suffers. But at some point, life has to go on, and it’s going on for Bob.”

Both men have regularly earned spots on the Palm Beach Daily News’ annual list of Forbes-ranked billionaires with homes in Palm Beach. In the most recent Forbes 400 list of U.S. billionaires released in October, Kraft’s fortune of $6.6 billion tied him at 79th place with other tycoons, while Trump ended up tied with others in 248th place with a net worth of $3.1 billion.

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Kraft heads The Kraft Group, a family business with headquarters at One Patriot Place in Foxborough, Mass. The company’s interests include manufacturing, sports, entertainment and real estate investment.

Palm Beach social scene

The Krafts were members of the Palm Beach Country Club, where Myra Kraft was an avid golfer. But it’s unclear whether Kraft also is a member at The Mar-a-Lago Club, the private club Trump opened in 1995 in the landmarked 1927 mansion built by cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post.

On the island’s social scene, Robert Kraft was said to be among the boldfaced names — including Karl Rove, Sean Hannity and fellow Palm Beacher Rudy Giuliani — who attended the 2010 wedding reception at The Breakers when Palm Beacher Rush Limbaugh married Kathryn Rogers.

Real estate-wise, Kraft was involved in a notable Palm Beach sale in 2010, when a trust affiliated with him sold an oceanfront vacant lot at 947 N. Ocean Blvd. for a recorded $19.32 million. The trust had bought the vacant lot five years prior for $19.13 million. Kraft’s trust sold the 1.6-acre lot to a company linked in public records to Philadelphia Phillies co-owner John Middleton, who has built a new house there. The 2010 sale was handled by real estate agent Crista Ryan of Tina Fanjul Associates, who declined to identify or comment on anyone involved in the transaction.

In addition to Kraft and Middleton, Palm Beach is the winter home of a number of other owners of professional sports teams, including Jeffrey Lurie of the Philadelphia Eagles, members of the Rooney family of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Minnesota Vikings co-owner Mark Wilf and Charles Johnson of the San Francisco Giants baseball franchise.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: How Donald Trump and Patriots owner Robert Kraft became friends