U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday he has been talking with President Donald Trump about coming to Baton Rouge for Alabama-LSU on November 7, a trip that would make it four Crimson Tide football games for Trump – and the first one he has watched from the other team’s stadium.
Johnson, a Shreveport-area Republican and two-time LSU graduate, made the remark to roughly 100 business and civic leaders at a Greater Shreveport Chamber of Commerce legislative update on the LSU Shreveport campus, first reported by Red River Radio.
Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman flagged the comment nationally Wednesday afternoon.
SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON said in Louisiana that he's been talking to President TRUMP about coming to Louisiana for LSU/Alabama on Nov. 7.
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) September 23, 2026
Johnson described the trip as under discussion. The White House has not announced one, and LSU has the game in a flex window with kickoff still to be set.
Trump has never needed much persuading when Alabama is on the field.
He stood on the field for the national anthem at the Alabama-Georgia national championship game in Atlanta on Jan. 8, 2018, and left at halftime with the Tide trailing 13-0. Alabama won 26-23 in overtime. “I don’t know if you know, but I was there,” Trump said when the team visited the White House that April.
In November 2019, he sat in a Bryant-Denny Stadium suite for No. 1 LSU at No. 2 Alabama and drew chants of “USA” from a crowd of more than 100,000.
Johnson, then a second-term congressman, was in the box with him, along with U.S. Senator Richard Shelby and U.S. Representatives Robert Aderholt, Bradley Byrne and Gary Palmer. LSU won 46-41.
“Someone asked me about it, and I said I went to a football game, and a Trump rally broke out,” Palmer (R-Hoover) said afterward.
Nick Saban called the visit “an honor.” LSU quarterback Joe Burrow said, “Regardless of your political views, that’s pretty cool, having the president at the game.”
Trump returned to Tuscaloosa as a candidate in September 2024, hosted by U.S. Senator Katie Britt (R-Montgomery) and seated with U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn), for Alabama’s 41-34 win over Georgia. Alabama Republican Party Chairman John Wahl said at the time: “What I love is two out of those three included Alabama — so I don’t know for sure — but I like to think that Donald Trump may be a Tide fan. It’s hard to root against a team whose mascot is an elephant and whose color is red.”
Seven months later Trump was back in Coleman Coliseum as the first sitting president to deliver a University of Alabama commencement address. He opened with “Roll Tide.”
No president has watched a game in Tiger Stadium. According to LSU’s centennial history of the building, the only president to set foot in it was Ronald Reagan, who gave a commencement speech there in May 1990.
Johnson has been working the LSU-Trump relationship from his end. He and Trump hosted the LSU and LSU Shreveport national championship baseball teams at the White House in October 2025.
The Tide has won 13 of the last 15 meetings in the series and six of the last seven in Baton Rouge. LSU has not been favored against Alabama since 2007, but BetMGM opened Lane Kiffin’s first LSU-Alabama game at Tigers -3.5 in May. Kiffin has never beaten Alabama as a head coach.
Trump gets an SEC tune-up first. The White House confirmed Wednesday he will attend No. 1 Texas at No. 14 Tennessee in Knoxville on Saturday, his first on-campus college football game since returning to office.
November 7 falls four days after the midterms, and four days after Alabama voters pick a new governor and a new U.S. senator.
Before the 2019 game, Trump told a Louisiana radio host: “I love football. I love those two states. I think I better remain neutral! But we’re going to have a good game.” Neutral will be a harder sell in a stadium where Governor Jeff Landry brought a live tiger onto the field for the Alabama game two years ago.
Grayson Everett is the editor in chief of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on X @Grayson270.
