Maeve Bidonde, Arts Editor
After nearly five decades, the USA Men’s Hockey team finally secured a gold Olympic Medal, but the victory was short lived after a call with President Trump that was caught on camera and went viral for all of the wrong reasons. As the team celebrated their win, FBI Director Kash Patel was with them in the locker room and pulled out his phone to call Trump who proceeded to invite them to the State of the Union address.
According to NBC News, Trump then made a rather distasteful joke about being forced to invite the USA Women’s Hockey team because they also won gold otherwise “I do believe I would probably be impeached.” The men’s team started laughing, and the clip went viral on the internet which brought backlash against the men’s team and Trump. In the clip, one player can clearly be heard saying “absolutely” agreeing with Trump while another says “two-for-two” acknowledging both victories in the 2026 Olympics.
During the speech, Trump gave the U.S. Men’s goalie Connor Hellebuyck with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Many conservatives have praised the men’s team for their patriotic statements and their American pride after the win. The women’s team turned down the invitation saying that they “deeply appreciate[s] the recognition of their extraordinary achievement” but due to prior commitments they could not attend the speech.
According to The Guardian, Hilary Knight, Captain of the USA Women’s Hockey Team, and holder of at least 10 Hockey records responded to the joke saying “I thought it was sort of a distasteful joke and unfortunately that is overshadowing a lot of the success, the success of just women at the Olympics carrying for Team USA and having amazing gold medal feats.” She also said that they would continue to celebrate the wins and not let that joke take away from it.
Jack Hughes, the man responsible for securing the game winning goal and the gold medal spoke about the incident “People are so negative about things,” he said. “I think everyone in that locker room knows how much we support [the women’s team], how proud we are of them. The same way we feel about them, they feel about us.”
Flavor Flav, founder of Public Enemy invited the women’s team to Las Vegas for what he called “a real celebration” including “some nice dinners and shows and good times.” He even invited the skeleton and bobsledding teams to the festivities as well.
Jack and Quinn Hughes often dubbed the Hughes brothers came under more fire than the rest of the men’s team because their mother Ellen Hughes is a famous women’s hockey player and a consultant to the women’s team as well. When she was asked about the call with Trump, she said that “it’s all about the country” along with saying “And the other things they cannot control. They care about humanity. They care about unity, and they care about the country.”
Jack Hughes added to his statement that “If there was a camera on me and Quinn when the women’s team won, we look like the biggest superfans of all time, we were just jumping up and down. We couldn’t believe it. … One of my first thoughts was her, and I am just so proud to join her as a gold medalist.”
It is unclear if the women’s team accepted Flavor Flav’s invitation for a celebration, but the men’s team did attend the State of the Union address that happened Tuesday the 24th.
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