Source: Icon Sportswire / Getty
Right ahead of his anticipated Super Bowl debut, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes is already receiving some negative attention due to tweets he allegedly posted back in 2013. The NFL MVP candidate supposedly made the tweets on the day George Zimmerman was acquitted from second degree murder and manslaughter for the death of Trayvon Martin.
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Initially, the unearthed tweets insinuated that Mahomes was defending Zimmerman. In one tweet, the alleged Mahomes account responded to a Spencer Shaw account, which said, “This case was an absolutely horrible tragedy, however there was no criminal activity that occurred #ZimmermanTrial.” Mahomes responded, “No one knows what actually happens which is why he is not guilty but a crime could have occurred.”
In another resurfaced tweet, which is dated to December 27, 2011, the Mahomes account responded to another Twitter user @strotherm, writing “stop resisting or assaulting a cop #realcops.”
https://twitter.com/white_jesus_/status/1217898513075462148
Zimmerman shot and killed 17-year-old Martin on Feb. 26, 2012, in a gated community after he reported him as a “suspicious” person to cops. After being advised not to follow Martin by authorities, Zimmerman still proceeded to follow Martin until they got into an altercation. Zimmerman fatally shot Martin, claiming he did so out of self-defense. The whole incident and Zimmerman’s eventual acquittal sparked nationwide protest over racial profiling and systematic injustice against Black people.
With Mahomes tweets, one could assume that he was defending Zimmerman, at worst, yet acknowledging that a crime was committed by him at best. Black Twitter immediately expressed their disappointment at Mahomes regardless, with one user writing, “@PatrickMahomes is a clown if he believes George Zimmerman is not guilty!! I don’t give a fu** about his athletic abilities 5 td’s or 10. Anyone that supports racism or ignorant bigotry is a bit** no matter what!! If not then congrats!”
Despite the initial backlash, eventually more tweets surfaced that might have painted a bigger story. In these tweets, Mahomes is once again going back and forth with user Spencer Shaw. When talking about the Zimmerman case, Shaw writes, “I think it was probably a bad misunderstanding that went bad” to which Mahomes responded, “Yea there was no reason for Zimmerman to follow him and trayvon just defended himself and Zimmerman had a guy so he shot him.”
https://twitter.com/iambxlly/status/1219268777231167490?s=20
In another tweet supposedly linked to Mahomes, he also seemed to be responding to Zimmerman’s acquittal, writing, “Knew this was going to happen at least you know Zimmerman will never be able to go in public again.”
These tweets still didn’t explain Mahomes’ strong affinity to the police, however, and his tweet about not “resisting or assaulting a cop.” This post is backed up by some of Mahomes’ recent actions where he visited the Kansas City Police back in May 2019 as part of Police Week. According to The Kansas City Star, he presented officers with a game ball and said, “The things the police do for our community on a day-to-day basis and don’t get recognized for it, it’s good to come out and support them because they support us in every single way.”
He even said he would even “think about” joining the force one day. Situations like this do pose the question of how Mahomes feels about cops’ relationship to Black people and the many instances of police brutality. Although he allegedly made his Zimmerman tweets back when he was 17 years old and his “stop resisting” tweets when he was 16, it’s possible his ideas about cops haven’t changed.
The Kansas City Chiefs will take on the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl on Sunday, February 2. According to CBS Sports, at 24 years old, Mahomes will be the fifth youngest quarterback to start in the huge game.
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