PHILADELPHIA — Are the Eagles going to visit the White House after the Super Bowl LIX win?

On Sunday, a weeks-old report from the Sun.com resurfaced. It was originally published before the Super Bowl and asserted that the Eagles would not be accepting a potential White House invitation following their win in Super Bowl LIX, citing “a well-placed insider” calling it a “massive no.”

A league source on Monday confirmed reports that the team is actually planning to visit the White House and “looks forward to receiving its invitation.”

According to a White House official, no invitation has yet been formally extended to the Eagles.

Earlier this month, the Florida Panthers became the first professional team to visit President Donald Trump during his second term in the White House on Feb. 3.

Who decides if the Eagles go?

Lane Johnson said during the lead-up to Super Bowl LIX that the decision to go or not to go will be up to a team vote.

“I’d be honored to go, regardless of who the president is, but we’ll see,” Johnson, one of the four Eagles still on the roster from the last Super Bowl win, told Sportico. “It’s ultimately a team decision. I’ll do what’s best for the team.”

Trump on the Eagles

During the lead-up to the Super Bowl, Trump was explicit that he was rooting for Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs, and ignored the Eagles, both after the NFC championship victory and for a full day after the game, which he attended and left at halftime, on social media, instead taking a shot at Taylor Swift and the new kickoff rules.

“The only one that had a tougher night than the Kansas City Chiefs was Taylor Swift,” Trump wrote in one post on Truth Social shortly after 11 p.m. Sunday. “She got BOOED out of the Stadium. MAGA is very unforgiving!”

“The worst part of the Super Bowl, by far, was watching the Kickoff where, as the ball is sailing through the air, the entire field is frozen, stiff,” Trump wrote just one minute later, rehashing a complaint of his from Friday. “College Football does not do it, and won’t! Whose idea was it to ruin the Game?”

Trump finally acknowledged the team on "The Mark Levin Show," after Levin, who is from Philadelphia, asked for his opinion on the Birds.

“The Eagles were really, it was like flawless football, amazing,” Trump said. “Even the first play, they called it back. It was a long pass, it was, you know, either a touchdown or going to be a touchdown. They called it back, completed long pass, and they went on to get touchdown after touchdown. They really played great.”

Super Bowl LII snub

The Eagles didn’t make a visit to the White House after winning Super Bowl LII. The Birds became the first team in NFL history to be uninvited to the White House in 2018 just days before the scheduled visit because of a number of player opt-outs, including Malcolm Jenkins, Chris Long, and LeGarrette Blount. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary at the time, decried the Eagles’ opt-outs as a “political stunt.”

“Unfortunately, only a small number of players decided to come, and we canceled the event,” Trump tweeted in June 2018. “Staying in the Locker Room for the playing of our national anthem is as disrespectful to our country as kneeling. Sorry!”

None of the Eagles knelt or went to the locker room during the national anthem in 2017, but Jenkins did raise his fist during the anthem on multiple occasions.

Instead, the White House hosted a “Celebration of America” on June 5, 2018, the day the Eagles had been scheduled to visit.

Reactions

Conservative radio host Megyn Kelly was notably upset about the prospect of the Eagles not visiting the White House.

But once news came out that the Birds planned to attend, she backed down.

Other fans, however, were happy to see the Birds potentially declining another invitation — even if that turned out to not be the case.

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