Jerome Bettis offers advice after teammate questioned Jaxon Dart's Trump rally appearance

New York Giants youngsters Jaxson Dart and Abdul Carter were at the center of an offseason controversy over the weekend. Super Bowl champion Jerome Bettis had some advice for the current generation of athletes. The controversy began when Dart, the Giants' quarterback and 2025 first-round pick, introduced President Donald Trump at a political rally in Suffern, New York, on Friday, May 22. Carter, who was a first-round pick along with Dart last year, seemed to call out his teammate on social media before backtracking.

Bettis says the two young athletes need to find common ground after the apparent political disagreement. "You don't have to agree (on politics)," Bettis said in an interview with Fox News. "And that's the one thing. I mean, you don't agree with your teammate, but you got to find a way to work with them." ABDUL CARTER: Giants' edge rusher reverses course after calling out Jaxson Dart for introducing Trump Dart and Carter seemed to be making progress in that regard quickly after the initial controversy brewed.

Carter's initial reaction to Dart's appearance at the rally appeared to call out the quarterback. He wrote on X: "Thought this (expletive) was AI, what we doing man." But fewer than 24 hours later, the edge rusher said he and Dart had found some of the aforementioned common ground. "Me and JD6 (Dart) are good! We spoke earlier as Men," Carter wrote in a follow-up post on X.

"Y'all can keep y'all narratives." Carter has since deleted both posts. Bettis said politics discussions are "always there" but "never really in the forefront in terms of sports or a locker room." He did acknowledge the landscape of politics has changed since his career, which began in 1993 and ended in 2005. Bettis said an issue like the one between Dart and Carter could be a byproduct of the current political climate. "I think it was much different 20 years ago than it is now," he said.

"Now everyone's picking sides and this and that and now you hate the other guy's side. And that was never the case in politics 20 years ago. "You respected the guy's decision and his politics was his politics, and now it's a much different dynamic that politics weighs on people nowadays." Bettis won a Super Bowl with the Steelers in his last season in the NFL and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2015. The Giants begin their second week of OTAs on Wednesday, May 27.

It will be the team's first spring practice session since the rally and ensuing controversy over the weekend.