Travis Kelce wasn’t joking when he sheepishly spoke a few words at the White House.
When the Kansas City Chiefs attended an official ceremony Friday to celebrate their back-to-back Super Bowl wins, Kelce took the podium at the invitation of President Joe Biden and said: “My fellow Americans … I’m not gonna lie, President Biden, they told me if I came up here, I’d get tased.”
While even Biden joined in a chorus of laughter, Kelce was apparently dead serious.
“That’s real,” he said on Wednesday’s episode of the “New Heights” podcast he co-hosts with brother Jason Kelce. “The Secret Service that’s all over the White House, they weren’t too happy with me. They weren’t too happy with me on my second time visiting.”
Kelce explained he’s been in trouble with the law enforcement agency before while taking part in the tradition of White House visits for winning sports teams.
The professional tight end and his teammates previously were at the White House last year, when Kelce unexpectedly waltzed over to an empty lectern while quarterback Patrick Mahomes was presenting the 46th president with a No. 46 Chiefs jersey.
“So, I’ve been waiting for this,” he told the crowd before Mahomes pulled him away.
“Last time … I had an expired ID,” Kelce said Wednesday. “I caught shit for that.”
He noted that, this year, “I made sure, because of what happened last time and how embarrassed I was for going to the White House with an expired ID, I made sure that I brought my passport.”
He was nonetheless mobbed by federal agents Friday who remembered his shenanigans.
“When I walked in, we had about four or five Secret Service members come up to me and tell me, ‘You know, if you go up to that podium we are authorized to tase you,’” Kelce recalled Wednesday, clarifying: “It is actually ordered for us to tase you.”
Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post/Getty Images
This time, Kelce was invited to say a few words by the president himself, who joked mere moments before: “I’d have Travis up here, but God only knows what he’d say.” The athlete said Wednesday he had “no idea” that he’d get called on and wisely kept it short.
“I felt taser aimed at me when I was up there the whole time,” he said on the podcast, later adding: “It’s always an honor to go to the White House, man. Any time that I get a chance to get recognized by the president of the United States and get to go with my teammates … I’m doing it.”
“No matter who’s up there at the helm,” he continued, “no matter what’s going on in this world, I think it’s just such a cool opportunity.”