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For a brief moment on Sunday, America was united. After the final Olympic hockey showdown between the United States and Canada went into overtime, Americans watched with glee as we beat our northern neighbors at their own game. Forward Jack Hughes, who sacrificed at least half a tooth for the win, flashed us an iconic, bloody smile, and people across the nation celebrated yet another Olympic gold.
Then, in less time than it probably took for Hughes to call his dentist, the unity shattered. While the team celebrated in the locker room, President Donald Trump called to congratulate the players on their win and invite them to Tuesday’s State of the Union address. Then, Trump being Trump, he made a joke.
“I must tell you, we’re going to have to bring the women’s team. You do know that?” he said. If he didn’t invite the team, he said, “I do believe I probably would be impeached.”
A video of the call went viral, and commentators grew gravely indignant on behalf of the women’s gold medal-winning team. But instead of criticizing Trump, the person who actually made the churlish remark, they went after the players.
“The USA men’s hockey team utterly failed to meet the cultural moment,” declared a USA Today writer. “The U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team won gold — and then lost the room,” whined a columnist at the New York Times. Incredibly, Vox released a list of the winners and losers of the Olympics, fawning over Eileen Gu, an American who chose to represent communist China, as a “winner,” and declaring the U.S. men’s hockey team a “loser.” Various internet onlookers demanded that the team “do better” and “apologize for laughing.”
Perhaps the funniest development was the solemn response of Twitter fan page “daily jack hughes,” which posted, “hi, honestly I am unsure of what to do with this account right now. I will figure it out eventually, but there will be no daily content happening. linked below are some important resources. lastly, f*ck ice and this administration. never stop supporting women.”
These critics’ demands were many. The team must explicitly denounce Trump and his administration, refuse his invitation to the State of the Union like the women’s hockey team did (apparently for scheduling conflicts), personally apologize for Trump’s joke, and probably invent a time machine and smash the cell phone Trump called them on.
No matter that the players have been supportive of their female peers. On Sunday, Hughes said the first person he thought of after scoring the winning goal was Megan Keller, who had just cinched the win for the U.S. women’s team. Even in the video, one player can be heard chanting “two for two!” in honor of both teams’ wins.
Hughes, for his part, has responded to the controversy like a champ. “They’ve got busy schedules, too,” he said of the women’s team in response to criticism of their declining the White House invitation. “Everyone is giving us backlash for all the social media stuff today.”
This, he suggested, is a non-controversy. “People are so negative out there, and they are just trying to find a reason to put people down and make something out of almost nothing,” he said.
Hughes’s mother, a former hockey player herself, also refused to take the bait. “These players, both the men and women, can bring so much unity to a group and to a country,” she said.
It’s not really worth arguing over to what degree President Trump’s joke was in poor taste. The U.S. men’s team could have immediately embarked on the cable news apology circuit and made a fat donation to the National Organization for Women, and it still wouldn’t have been good enough. Short of posting Luigi Mangione fanfiction, there is no way for them to redeem themselves in the eyes of progressives, for whom everything, always, is political.
Of course, there were no such controversies when former President Joe Biden hosted Olympians in 2024 and 2022. For all of our faults, we conservatives tend not to compare our presidents to Nazis and demand that athletes and celebrities refrain from fraternizing with them. Not so for our counterparts across the aisle.
To the legacy media and some keyboard warriors on Twitter, there is no such thing as neutrality. “This isn’t a neutral climate,” wrote the New York Times columnist in his criticism of the men’s hockey team. “This isn’t a neutral president.”
But the president is never neutral. He has always represented a particular party with its own ambitions that might be served by latching on to the good publicity of an Olympic win. What has changed is that certain figures in the media have decided that you’re only allowed to engage with one side, the “good” side, which is therefore neutral. The best you can hope for as a public figure is for no one to ask you about politics. That game isn’t as simple as hockey. If the mob comes for you, there is no way to win.
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