So this is something different.

President Donald Trump, who continually rips the NFL's national anthem policy and attacks players who kneel or protest during "The Star-Spangled Banner," actually did the league a solid.

Trump appeared at a rally Thursday in Rochester, Minnesota.

While there, he was talking up his new trade deal with Canada.

Trump says the NFL and the Super Bowl will directly benefit from the agreement, per the New York Post:

"During the negotiation, I said 'you got to fix the NFL problem,'" Trump said of his trade talks with Canada. "It took me two minutes and now the NFL is so happy it's all worked out.

"And now our country will be taking tens of millions of dollars more money," Trump continued. "A lot of it is going to go to the players and they'll still hate me, can you believe that!?"

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell lends credence to Trump's claim, issuing a statement thanking Trump for the new trade deal, per the Washington Post:

"We greatly appreciate President Trump's leadership and determination in bringing about a resolution to our intellectual property issue in Canada," Goodell said in a written statement released by the NFL.

As for how the deal actually helps the NFL, here is the Washington Post's breakdown:

Canada agreed Sunday to join the trade agreement between the United States and Mexico. The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, is the revised version of the North American Free Trade Agreement that Trump had sought, and it overturns a regulatory order in Canada forcing the CTV network to air American commercials on its Super Bowl broadcast.

That ruling by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission prevented CTV from increasing its revenue from its Super Bowl telecast by selling ads in Canada.

The NFL, seeking to preserve the value of its Super Bowl broadcasting rights in Canada, opposed the CRTC order and sought a return to the policy of simultaneous substitution, which allows Canadian TV stations with Canadian broadcasting rights to replace U.S. ads with local Canadian ads during imported programming shown simultaneously with the U.S. telecast.

Bottom line, Trump just cleared the way for the NFL, which is already a cash cow, to make more money off Super Bowl broadcasts.

Just another reminder that politics does indeed make for strange bedfellows.

Mike Rosenstein may be reached at mrosenstein@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @rosenstein73. Find NJ.com on Facebook.