US hockey was bathed in a golden Olympic glow. Then Donald Trump and Kash Patel stepped in | USA ice hockey team
Keeping politics at bay during the gold medal game between the U.S. men’s hockey team and Canada was always going to be difficult.
The match took place on the 46th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice, when an underdog group of American college players upset the mighty Soviet Union team against the backdrop of the Cold War. But the U.S. team that took the ice Sunday was not a group of plucky amateurs taking a stand for democracy against authoritarianism — a point underscored when the United States and Canada met last year in the 4 Nations showdown. Canadian fans booed the Star-Spangled Banner and American players, either ignorant or unsympathetic to Canadians’ desire to be neither America’s 51st state nor America’s adversary in a scorched-earth trade war, dropped the gloves to fight their opponents from the start of the game.
Sunday’s match, however, was played with the utmost sportsmanship – and not just because Olympic rules harshly punish fighting. The teams’ wishes go beyond the traditional handshake. Jack Hughes, who scored the game-winner for the United States, was charming and gracious in the victory, saying one of his first thoughts was a recent conversation with Megan Keller, who scored the goal for the U.S. women’s team just days before. Hockey’s unifying force was further highlighted when a video in which Hughes spoke about the importance of LGBTQ rights went viral.
The glow didn’t last long.
Everyone who works in American sports, from senior administrators to the youth coaching and refereeing levels, is required to complete training from the U.S. Center for SafeSport, which reminds them to act quickly if they hear of accusations of sexual abuse. So the optics of USA Hockey letting FBI Director Kash Patel, accused of mishandling the Epstein case investigation, party with the team wasn’t great.
Patel has previously been criticized for his travel tendencies, and he fired a longtime FBI employee when news of his travels, which were fully visible to the public, actually became public. Hughes was also among the team members who posed for a photo with Patel, whose tenure at the FBI included the alleged firing of an employee for having a pride flag at his office. Patel’s spokesperson said the FBI director was in Italy on official business anyway, but his critics point out that he had plenty of work for him at home that he could (or should) have done instead of partying with hockey players.
Then Donald Trump called to invite Americans to be his guests at Tuesday’s State of the Union address — already putting players in the uncomfortable position of deciding whether to annoy Maga diehards by saying no, or annoy the rest of the country by accepting the invitation.
Trump made the situation worse by joking that he would have to invite the women’s team as well or risk being impeached. And shortly after Hughes greeted Keller, many players on the U.S. men’s team laughed at Trump’s joke. Many also expressed approval of the women’s team being recognized, and Hughes praised the women’s team again Monday after the backlash sparked by the locker room videos.
“People are so negative about things,” he told ESPN. “I think everyone in this locker room knows how much we support them, how proud we are of them. The same way we feel about them, they feel about us.”
The women’s team politely but clearly declined the invitation due to “timing and previously scheduled academic and professional commitments.” After all, the Women’s Professional Hockey League season resumes on Thursday. Men, of course, have no such commitments, unless you take into account that the NHL season resumes on Wednesdayless than 24 hours after the State of the Union address.
Certainly, invitations to visit the White House became more and more numerous during the 20th century. Boston Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas declined an invitation from Barack Obama because of his now-ironic concern about the sprawling size and authority of the federal government. Several teams declined — in some cases, preemptively — invitations to visit the White House during Trump’s first term, including the U.S. women’s soccer team (Megan Rapinoe’s response was succinct and crude) and the Golden State Warriors. When many Washington Capitals players went to the White House to celebrate their Stanley Cup victory in 2018, several players refused to make the trip. Devante Smith-Pelly, who scored a spectacular goal in the Capitals’ decisive Game 5 victory and was one of the few black players in the NHL at the time, called Trump’s rhetoric “downright racist and sexist.” Guard Braden Holtby’s refusal stemmed from the same values that led to his significant participation in Pride events in the D.C. area, saying, “I want to stick to what I believe in and move toward a world where people are treated equally.” »
Such links between sports and politics will be increasingly difficult to avoid this summer when the United States is one of the hosts of the men’s World Cup. Avoiding political positions can be seen as a strategy to avoid further polarization, but when the country is already as polarized as it is, silence can easily be seen as complicity.
As of now, it’s hard to say how many players will actually attend the State of the Union address. Quinn Hughes, Jack’s older brother and a Team USA defender, told Good Morning America on Tuesday that the players were “excited to go.”
“It’s not something you can do every Tuesday,” he said. “It’s going to be special for us.”
But the negative reaction, along with the realization that many of them will be playing important NHL games the next day, could keep some away.
Some players will be pressured to be “team players” and accept the propaganda-driven invitation from Capitol Hill. But perhaps some will recognize that they are being asked to give tacit approval to an administration that denies many U.S. residents and citizens the chance to be part of the broader American team.
