It is very difficult to write about anything in American life at this particular moment without writing about Donald Trump. The president has become so ubiquitous at this point — interjecting himself into the Olympics, the Grammys, and whatever else might be scrolling down his feed — that to find a place where he is absent becomes instantly noteworthy. It’s like finding that one subway car in the summer where the air-conditioning still works.

After becoming the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl last year in New Orleans, Trump stayed away from this year’s edition in Santa Clara, ostensibly because “it’s too far away.” I can report that one felt his physical absence in the stadium. I’ve been to multiple sporting events Trump has attended over the last decade, from the College Football National Championship Game in Atlanta in January 2018 (in which some fans didn’t even get into the stadium until the second quarter because of the security checks) to the 2020 CFP title game right before COVID (in which he and Melania took a good ten minutes to walk onto the field) to a Braves-Astros World Series game where he did the tomahawk chop and cheered a guy wearing a “Let’s Go Brandon!” shirt. There is a certain toxic electricity when he’s in the building, like a horror-movie villain who could pop up on the Jumbotron at any time. (One who’s going to make traffic a nightmare on the way home, too.) You feel it every play.

Had the game not been held in California, it would have been tailor-made for Trump. It was the 60th Super Bowl, a big round number, featuring the New England Patriots and their longtime Trump-loyalist owner Robert Kraft, who just sat with the........

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