Incoming President-elect Donald Trump will attend the 125th Army-Navy football game on Saturday, adding an extra level of stateliness to an occasion already rife with tradition.
This is the fifth time Trump has attended the game, which kicks off today at 3 p.m. ET from Northwest Field in Landover, Maryland. The clash between the nation’s service academies is a staple of the final month of the college football season and marks the traditional end point of the regular season.
While the sitting president typically conducts the coin toss before the game when in attendance, it’s unclear if Trump will take up this task as president-elect. When he attended the game as president-elect in 2016, he did not perform that duty.
Vice President-elect JD Vance will also be in attendance — and made headlines Friday by inviting Daniel Penny, a former Marine, to attend with him in the presidential suite. Penny was widely embraced by right-wing political figures after being charged with fatally choking Jordan Neely earlier this year, and many of them celebrated his acquittal on Monday.
Trump previously commented on the case, telling Fox News, “It’s an awfully tough case, I think.” Vance expressed his support for Penny on Monday, posting to X, “thank God justice was done in this case. It was a scandal Penny was ever prosecuted in the first place.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who served in the US Navy, is also expected to attend the game, according to a source familiar with the plan, but it’s unclear if his and Trump’s trips are related.
CNN’s Kit Maher contributed reporting to this post.
