US President Trump again went to bat for one of his biggest supporters on Saturday.
"GET PETE ROSE INTO THE BASEBALL HALL OF FAME," Trump said in a seemingly unprompted tweet. "It's Time!"
Trump has previously vouched for the disgraced MLB legend, who was handed a lifetime ban from the game in 1989 after it was revealed he bet on games while he was manager of the Cincinnati Reds.
Trump on Saturday said Rose had "paid a decades long price" for gambling on the game, "but only on his own team winning."
Trump has fired off well over a dozen tweets in support of Rose over the years, all predating his time in office. Ahead of the Republican primary in Ohio in 2016, Trump tweeted a photo of a baseball apparently autographed by Rose and inscribed "Mr. Trump, Please Make America Great Again."
Rose requested reinstatement in 2015 but was denied by MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred. He has occasionally popped up in the periphery of the game and in the media over the last decade or so, most notably on a short-lived TLC reality show and as an analyst with FOX Sports. Rose was abruptly fired from that job in 2017, when an allegation of statutory rape against him surfaced during his defamation case against John Dowd, MLB's lead investigator in the gambling investigation.