Kraft embarrasses self, team, and all of us with renewed ties to Trump.

The New York Times captured this photo of Robert Kraft at the Melania movie.

These should have been the happiest of times for the New England Patriots and their 84-year-old owner, Robert Kraft.

After all, his highly-successful football team has advanced to another Super Bowl on his watch -- his first without the snarling sourpuss named Bill Belichick at the helm. And as a result, the Patriots had the opportunity to dispel some of notions created by Belichick over his two-decade reign that the team couldn't do anything worthwhile without cheating.

But no, Kraft had to go and spoil it all. One photograph of the team owner, standing shoulder-to-belt buckle with President Donald J. Trump at the premiere of the entirely unnecessary $70 million "documentary" about Trump's mail-order bride, has once again made the Patriots the team that America loves to hate.

America's "First Concubine."

You screwed up, Bob. By attending the premiere of "Melania" (which could have been subtitled, "The Unhappy Hooker") at the Kennedy Center, you've made the Seattle Seahawks "America's Team" just one week before they and the Patriots are to do battle in Santa Clara, Calif., in the 60th Super Bowl.

There's a very good chance that Kraft has done everything he can, quite unwittingly, to undercut everything Mike Vrabel has done in his first year as the Patriots' head coach. By being caught on camera emphatically applauding the movie while standing next to the hulking Trump, looking very much like an obedient pet, Kraft has stoked a social media firestorm fueled by resentment of No. 47's dictatorial-inspired ignorance of and disdain for the Constitution of the United States.

Fans of reasonable intelligence that hated the Patriots to begin with have had that hatred reinforced by Kraft's renewed friendship with the so-called real estate tycoon that has turned governance into his own personal get-rich-quick scheme. Even those on the fence about the Patriots, who may have been sensing that Vrabel had brought new energy and new philosophies to the team in his efforts to rebuild it, are profoundly disappointed to see Kraft's smiling face endorsing the man and his alleged "wife" (at least she is while the checks keep clearing) that have gleefully overseen the complete destruction of due process while turning America into a police state that has more in common with the world's dictatorships than it has with the democracies that had been staunch allies for more than a century.

They were bosom buddies.

I, personally, wonder if Kraft has become too addled at his advanced age to remember why he parted ways with Trump in the first place.

According to past interviews he did with local media, it was because of the Jan. 6 insurrection -- a dark day in American history when an unpopular and defeated president that couldn't accept his loss stoked the fires of hatred in a speech that sent thousands of acolytes to the steps of the U.S. Capitol, their intent being to stop the certification of Joe Biden's election by any means possible, including the hanging death of Trump's own vice president.

Five years later, Kraft has apparently forgotten all that. While Rome (or in this case, Minneapolis) is burning and as the pardoned Jan. 6 criminals are marching in jackbooted joy through the streets of several American cities as Trump's personal Gestapo, Kraft is gushing over a film commissioned by a billionaire seeking favor with the ruler of the Fourth Reich and directed by an accused sex offender.

I just hope the popcorn at the Kennedy Center was tasty.

Kraft had another reason to be at Der Führer's side for the Melania movie. It's because Trump threw Bobby a bone by putting his second wife, Dr. Dana Blumberg, on the board of trustees of the "Trump-Kennedy Center" -- and just that name alone is a deep affront to the memory of President John F. Kennedy, one of this commonwealth's most revered individuals.

There certainly does seem to be a significant level of hypocrisy afoot here.

The opposite of Trump's
vision of today's America.

Kraft, as you may know, was the benefactor behind a public-relations blitz to combat the rise in anti-Semitism in the United States. At one of the last games I attended as a beat writer of 42 years' tenure, a little blue lapel pin was distributed to every member of the media in attendance -- square in shape, with a white symbol "#" in one corner -- that represented what Kraft called "the Blue Square Alliance to Stop Jewish Hate." Since then, every televised NFL game includes commercial spots touting Kraft's battle to eliminate persecution of those of the Jewish faith.

As I have many wonderful friends of that faith, I have worn the pin. So have many others. Mike Vrabel occasionally wears one on the vest he dons as part of his coaching attire. It would seem to be a very worthy statement -- even though the revelation of the horrors of the 1940s should have been enough to eradicate anti-Semitism just about anywhere on this earth where blind religious fervor does not dictate every facet of everyday life.

But in the United States of the 2020s, anti-Semitism is back in a big way. So is race hatred. And it's all tacitly (if not openly) endorsed by the Christian nationalists of the Trump Administration that still contend that Jesus Christ was a blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryan. To them, the only good America is one that's white, fundamentalist Christian and purged of equal rights for women, gays, transgender individuals and anyone whose skin color is not the same ashen-pale hue as our President when he isn't wearing his multiple layers of orange tanning agent.

How does that dovetail with Bob Kraft's campaign against anti-Semitism? It doesn't. Kraft really should know by now (and maybe he did when his brain was a little more functional) that Trump tolerates Jews or anyone else only as much as they can benefit him.

Back to the team, I'm wondering how Vrabel sees all this as he is about to take his team to the West Coast.

Obviously, I covered Vrabel for the full extent of his Patriots playing career. He was clearly smart and ultra-productive, although he occasionally bristled at media attention -- probably because those were the orders of the day for anyone that played under Belichick. Only a few notable exceptions treated the media corps as actual human beings, individuals who had established their credibility elsewhere and could not be brow-beaten by Belichick. I'm immediately reminded of the late Junior Seau, who knew and respected the limitations of the program but could still be himself. I still mourn his passing.

Mike Vrabel has Kraft's pin on his vest.

When Vrabel was named head coach of the Patriots, I thought it was a good hire -- far better than Jerod Mayo, for sure, because of his experience level -- but I also wondered if he would be just another Belichick that would circle his wagons around the team and build walls around it. 

While I'm not there on a daily basis as I was in the past, I've come away with the belief that Vrabel is entirely his own man as head coach, and not a Belichick clone. He clearly has taken the best of what Belichick espoused and incorporated it into his own coaching and managerial styles, but there is more of an openness, an enthusiasm, and an acceptance that the full Belichick treatment just doesn't work in the NFL of the 2020s. 

I'm very impressed with how Vrabel treats his players. He thanks every single one of them for their effort when they come off the field. I'm sure there are rules that can't be broken that Vrabel won't reveal because he correctly believes that what happens within the locker room should stay within the locker room. But Vrabel preaches accountability, he accepts it, and he doesn't drop into a deep funk and shoot daggers out of his eyes when the inevitable questions come to him.

So, the new coach has created an environment that has made the Patriots a team you want to like, not hate. He has quickly broken from the hard edges of the past and created a winning team that is encouraged but not coddled. He has put his own stamp upon it -- although I have heard people compare his approach more to Bill Parcells than Bill Belichick -- and it was all going so swimmingly, until ... oops.

I suspect there are two approaches Vrabel could take to all this.

First, he could just shut it out and claim it has no effect at all on his preparation for Super Bowl 60. That's a time-honored approach. All of the coaches I covered during my tenure on the beat, from Chuck Fairbanks to Belichick, had the occasion to claim that ignorance is bliss, even as the walls of the stadium were crumbling around them.

Vrabel could also use it as motivational. It wouldn't be the first time that a Patriots coach could use "us against the world" as a rallying cry. They used it even when the Patriots were No. 1 seeds, steamrolled their way to any one of their six Super Bowl championships, and still had the audacity to claim that "nobody thought we could do this!"

Does Jonathan Kraft (left) also endorse Trump?

But it's all so unnecessary. Perhaps someone a little farther down the food chain, like No. 1 Son Jonathan, should have told his daddy that this was not the right time to be caught buddying up to the most unpopular president in modern history. But just as Trump's minions of hate are all terrified of him, either Jonathan is equally terrified of his father -- or maybe he endorses the connection his family has to the Cheeto Benito.

I'm sure some of my readers are chiming in with an opinion. "You've always been anti-Kraft, you small-time hack," might be a popular refrain.

Well, I can't deny I've criticized the ruling family from time to time. I don't get down on one knee and genuflect when Robert walks by. I don't call him "Mr. Kraft" in feigned admiration as some of my former colleagues still do. I admire and respect the rings, but I never kissed them.

I'll also admit that I may owe Robert Kraft my life. If he hadn't spearheaded the Patriot Place development and attracted what is now Mass. General Brigham to set up a healthcare center there, the stroke I had in 2014 might have killed me. Instead, I went there for treatment, they immediately got me to Boston, and six days later I was able to return home (and back to the Patriots beat) with a new lease on life.

For that, I'm grateful. I'm also grateful that I was able to cover one of the greatest dynasties in pro football history. In terms of "Promises Made, Promises Kept," Kraft has fulfilled that far more than Trump could ever hope to claim.

That doesn't change the fact that buddying up to Trump right now is a very bad look for the aging patriarch of the Patriots. It's something that could have and should have been avoided -- and not just because there's a Super Bowl looming that could have dispelled all of what made America hate the Patriots in the first place.

Look around you, Robert. Look at journalists being jailed, a total suspension of individual liberties to not just immigrants but to Americans of all nationalities and races, and jackbooted thugs "enforcing laws" of oppression. People are being shot in the streets, for God's sake.

This snapshot from the Kennedy Center was Nero playing his violin while Rome burns.

MARK FARINELLA, a liberal but not affiliated with a political party, believes Trump Derangement Syndrome is the cure and not the disease. He can be contacted at theownersbox2020@gmail.com