{"id":494968,"date":"2026-02-23T22:26:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T22:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/494968\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T22:26:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T22:26:07","slug":"trump-mocks-u-s-womens-hockey-team-after-gold-medal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/494968\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Mocks U.S. Women’s Hockey Team After Gold Medal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tExhausted, sweaty athletes, beer, champagne, and a congratulatory call from the president of the United States. All standard fare during the celebration of a gold-medal winning game at the Olympics<\/a>. But some of the commotion around the U.S. men\u2019s hockey<\/a> team \u2014 who won their first Olympic gold medal since the 1980 \u201cMiracle on Ice\u201d \u2014 has taken a political turn, with beleaguered FBI Director Kash Patel<\/a> celebrating in the locker room before patching in President Donald Trump<\/a>, who complained to the players that he would also \u201chave to bring\u201d the gold-medal winning U.S. women\u2019s team to festivities at the White House or \u201cbe impeached.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn videos of the celebration<\/a> Patel \u2014 whose office spent days insisting he was in Milan on official business and not to party at the Olympics<\/a> \u2014 chugged beers, banged on tables, and tried on players\u2019 gold medals. At one point, he held out his phone so the president could deliver a message<\/a> to the team. Trump congratulated them, and offered to coordinate military aircraft to transport the team from Miami (where they will be flying to in order to avoid winter storms battering the northeast) to Washington, D.C., for his State of the Union address on Tuesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019ll do the White House,\u201d Trump told players. \u201cWe\u2019ll just have some fun, we have medals for you guys. And we have to \u2014 I must tell you \u2014 we\u2019re going to have to bring the women\u2019s team, you do know that,\u201d the president said, chuckling. The players laughed. \u201cI do believe I probably would be impeached [if I didn\u2019t],\u201d Trump continued.<\/p>\n

\n\tNeither the White House or USA Hockey \u2014 which manages both the men\u2019s and women\u2019s teams \u2014 immediately responded to requests for comment from Rolling Stone.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe women\u2019s team on Monday said it is declining Trump\u2019s invitation to attend the State of the Union. \u201cWe are sincerely grateful for the invitation extended to our gold medal\u2013winning U.S. Women\u2019s Hockey Team and deeply appreciate the recognition of their extraordinary achievement,\u201d a USA Hockey spokesperson said, citing timing and previously scheduled commitments. \u201cThey were honored to be included and are grateful for the acknowledgment,\u201d the spokesperson added.<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tThe United States won 12 gold medals at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics<\/a>, half of which were won by female athletes, and another two by mixed-gender teams. The final match of the women\u2019s hockey event between the United States and Canada broke the record for the most-watched women\u2019s hockey game ever. So far, the White House has not extended an invitation to the U.S. women\u2019s hockey team, and there is no record of the president giving them a congratulatory locker room phone call. Instead, the president \u2014 who claims he wants to \u201cprotect\u201d and uphold women\u2019s sports by demonizing transgender athletes \u2014 painted the women\u2019s team as unwanted hangers-on to the men\u2019s celebration. It isn\u2019t surprising from a president who has a long history of reflexive misogyny and alleged abuse against women.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tTeam USA was already in a difficult position going into these Olympics. The team arrived in Italy amid international attention to Trump\u2019s deadly immigration crackdown, the continued fallout of the Epstein saga, and the perpetual tension Trump has wrought between the United States and its international allies. Any athlete who spoke candidly<\/a> about their concerns regarding the political climate within the U.S.A., or god forbid outright criticized the president and Republicans, became the subject of threats and pile-ons by conservatives.<\/p>\n

\n\tTrump even directly attacked<\/a> U.S. skier Hunter Hess after he told reporters that \u201cjust because I\u2019m wearing the flag doesn\u2019t mean I represent everything that\u2019s going on in the U.S.\u201d The president in turn called Hess a \u201creal loser\u201d that \u201cshouldn\u2019t have tried out for the Team,\u201d if he felt that way in a Truth Social post. Figure Skater Amber Glenn \u2014 who won a gold medal in the team competition \u2014 said she received \u201ca scary amount of hate\/threats\u201d after speaking openly about her experience as an LGBTQ athlete. Conservative pundits and influencers went so far as to suggest that athletes who were vocally critical of the president or the state of the country be kicked off the team or outright stripped of citizenship.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tMeanwhile, FBI Director Patel celebrated with players in Milan as he and the FBI struggled to fend off accusations of incompetence and abuse of public funds<\/a>, including for personal travel to sporting events and visits to see his girlfriend<\/a>, singer Alexis Wilkins. Patel claimed he had been in Milan for \u201cmultiple partner and counterpart meetings including the Ambassador, MOU signings, LEGAT meetings, security briefings and more,\u201d and that it was \u201cNOT accurate to say he\u2019s flying out on government funds for a personal trip,\u201d in a social media post<\/a> featuring an email the FBI sent to MS Now. It bears remembering that in 2023, well before taking the job, Patel publicly declared<\/a> that the FBI director did not need a \u201cgovernment funded G-5 jet to go [on] vacation,\u201d and suggested grounding the plane. During his 2025 confirmation hearing, Patel promised<\/a> that the resources of the FBI would be exclusively dedicated to saving American lives. \u201cAmerica deserves a better brand of justice and I\u2019m going to give it to them,\u201d Patel declared.<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\t\u00a0\u201cFor the very concerned media \u2014 yes, I love America and was extremely humbled when my friends, the newly minted Gold Medal winners on Team USA, invited me into the locker room to celebrate this historic moment with the boys,\u201d Patel wrote Monday on X<\/a>. \u201cGreatest country on earth and greatest sport on earth.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tEven if one believes there\u2019s nothing wrong with an administration official joining players in the locker room, Patel behaving like a frat house pledge the day a gunman was shot and killed<\/a> while attempting to breach Trump\u2019s Mar-a-Lago resort suggests that he isn\u2019t as laser-focused on the job as he promised lawmakers<\/a> he would be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Exhausted, sweaty athletes, beer, champagne, and a congratulatory call from the president of the United States. All standard…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[138952,13541,49,48,1376,5239,119933,4963,82,74436],"class_list":["post-494968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-2026-milan-winter-olympics","tag-2026-winter-olympics","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-donald-trump","tag-hockey","tag-kash-patel","tag-olympics","tag-sports","tag-winter-olympics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}