"Who’s got a better body, me or Tom Brady?" Donald Trump once asked.
It was just one of many occasions on which the former president hyped up his friendship with the Mr Brady, the 45-year-old NFL superstar who is considered by many to be the greatest quarterback of all time.
The seven-time Super Bowl champion has long deflected probing questions about his beliefs and connections, insisting that "political support is totally different than the support of a friend".
But now Mr Brady’s politics are in the spotlight again after a Republican candidate reportedly boasted that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback is on texting terms with Florida’s GOP governor Ron DeSantis.
So what do we really know about Tom Brady’s political beliefs?
’Donald is a good friend of mine’
In 2004, Mr Brady was invited by President George Bush to attend his fourth State of the Union address, prompting inquiries from journalists about his politics.
Mr Brady, then playing for the New England Patriots, declined to comment, despite telling ESPN magazine that his "craziest ambition" was to be a US senator.
However, news blog The Smoking Gun reported that voting records showed Mr Brady had almost never voted since 2000, when he registered in California as "undecided".
Those questions rose back to public attention in September 2015, when reporters spotted a "Make America Great Again" hat in Mr Brady's locker. He had been friends with Mr Trump since 2001, and the pair often played golf together.
Asked if Mr Trump could win, the Patriots star said: "I hope so. That would be great." He added: "There’d be a putting green on the White House lawn, I’m sure of that."
Those comments only increased the scrutiny. "Can I just stay out of this debate?" Mr Brady said during an interview with Boston radio staton WEEI.
"Donald is a good friend of mine. I have known him for a long time.... he’s always been so supportive of me – for the last 15 years, since I judged a beauty pageant for him, which was one of the very first things that I did that thought was really cool... he’s always invited me to play golf."
Mr Brady concluded: "I support all my friends in everything they do. I think it’s pretty remarkable what he’s achieved in his life."
He stopped short of saying that he would vote for Mr Trump, saying that politics was "not something that I really even enjoy" and "way off my radar".
Then Mr Trump actually won, and Mr Brady was dragged into the tumultuous orbit of one of the least popular American presidents of modern times.
‘Politics was uncomfortable to me’
Mere days after Mr Trump's victory in November 2016, Mr Brady told an interviewer that his wife Gisele Bündchen had ordered him not to talk about politics anymore. "I think that's a good decision for our family," he admitted.
Just before the vote, Mr Trump had touted Mr Brady as one of his highest profile endorsements, claiming that the sportsman had told him: "Donald, I support you, you’re my friend and I voted for you."
This was not the first time Mr Trump had boasted of Mr Brady's support. According to one report in early 2017, he had been "dropping Brady’s name at every opportunity over the last several months".
Ms Bündchen hotly denied voting for Trump in an Instagram post, and Mr Brady distanced himself from the idea. As the mercurial president's so-called January 2017 "Muslim ban" caused chaos in airports across the country, sparking many protests, Mr Brady stuck to his deflections.
In April that year, when the Patriots won the Super Bowl and were invited to a celebration at the White House, Mr Brady announced he would be "unable to attend" due to "some personal family matters".
Since then, Mr Brady has continued to keep his head below the parapet, despite endorsing a Republican candidate for state auditor of Massachusetts in 2018 (she lost).
In 2020, he revealed that Mr Trump had asked him to speak at the 2016 Republican Party convention, but he had declined. Politics, he recalled had made it more difficult to spend time with Mr Trump.
"I got brought into a lot of those things because it was so polarising around the election time," he said. "It was uncomfortable to me. You can’t undo things – not that I would undo a friendship – but the political support is totally different than the support of a friend."
And in July this year, Mr Brady told Variety that the press had "mischaracterised" his relationship with Mr Trump, with whom he had not spoken "in a lot of years".
With speculation rife about Mr DeSantis opposing Mr Trump in a bid for the Republican nomination in 2024, any show of support to either side by Mr Brady could make ripples.
