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By Brady Tkachuk The United States won Olympic gold after beating Canada in the men’s hockey final in Milan on Sunday. On Tuesday, he joined most of his teammates in the Oval Office, smiling and clenching their fists as they were feted by Donald Trump. That night, Trump ceremoniously introduced the team during his State of the Union address, holding them up as a symbol of American victory. Both houses of Congress applauded them.
Tkachuk completed his morning skate Thursday in Ontario, where he is the captain of Canada’s most boring NHL team, the Ottawa Senators. As part of the NHL’s standard media protocol, he was asked to answer questions from the assembled media, who wanted to know his opinion on a few things: First, why did Tkachuk and much of Team USA laugh when Trump dissed the gold-medal-winning U.S. women’s hockey team? (Trump explained to the men that he also had to invite the ladies to Washington so he wouldn’t be impeached.) Second, how would Captain Ottawa feel about the White House posting an AI-generated video on its TikTok account that allegedly showed Tkachuk antagonizing the country he works for? “They booed our national anthem, so I had to come out and teach those maple syrup-eating motherfuckers a lesson,” Tkachuk “said” in the video. “Canada, we got you, little brother.” The video was posted shortly after the game and before the team headed to Washington, and now Tkachuk is being asked to talk about it all.
Tkachuk is obviously not having that much fun now. He didn’t have much to answer for the laughter sparked by the idea of inviting a women’s team to the White House, calling Trump’s dig “instantaneous.” Tkachuk also shot down those who thought he was heard screaming “close the northern border” in the (real) locker room video – saying it wasn’t his voice and he wouldn’t have said that.
“I don’t know how this thing started a firestorm when I was giving it my all here,” he told The Canadian Press. In a darkly comic moment, Tkachuk had to explain that more than 1,000 people on TikTok alone White House AI video viewed 10,000 times is fake: “Well, it’s obviously fake because it’s not my voice and it’s not the movement of my lips. I have no control over any of these accounts. I know those words will never come out of my mouth. So, there’s nothing I can do about it.” He made no apology for mocking Trump’s misogyny.
The Tkachuk affair was a signal that it was time to stop talking about this story—not because it wasn’t important, but because ultimately, the most naive people involved in the saga were blamed. Tkachuk is the saddest of these cases, but nearly every member of the U.S. team has had to field intrusive questions about their final days as part of Trump’s political agenda. A handful of them offered mid-level apologies (which didn’t always include the word “sorry”) for the men’s team joining Trump in making fun of the women’s team. These participants have learned what all those who lend credibility to Donald Trump eventually learn: they can’t decide how he uses them, or what happens to their reputations when he does.
Are the players angry that Trump is taking advantage of them? Probably not. No team is monolithic, but the culture of hockey is extremely conservative, whether you’re a high school player who never accomplished anything (like I was) or an NHL player. In the limited data we have on U.S. NHL players, there are several times more Republicans than Democrats. It would be surprising if this ideological dynamic stopped altogether at the northern border. Wayne Gretzky, the Canadian, the best player of all time, and a regular at Trump’s clubs has not had a negative word to say about his golfing buddies threatening to annex his home country. The great man regarded the backlash against his actions from both sides as hysterical. He has the same tendencies as Team USA’s overtime hero in the gold medal game. Jack Hughes said of Trump’s comments about the women’s team that “people were very negative about things,” but didn’t address the subject. Teammate Tage Thompson put on a MAGA hat and then quickly adopted a patriotic neutral stance, explaining that he loves Jesus and is proud to be an American. All of this sounds evasive, but may be sincere. A real part of hockey culture is the belief that it’s impossible for hockey players to get involved in politics.
If all the team does is win the White House, it’s still going to face some backlash. These news cycles were a feature of Trump’s first term and remain so in his second. In 2017, the NHL team the Pittsburgh Penguins visited Trump for the first time after Trump rescinded his invitation to the predominantly black Golden State Warriors. But had these gold medal hockey players and their team leadership not taken action, they would not be in the midst of this unprecedented culture war storm. real Pushed it.
Video of the team’s locker room celebrations didn’t include the players’ families, but it did include FBI director and hockey fan Kash Patel, essentially having a Make-A-Wish Day on taxpayer dollars. Kudos to U.S. general manager Bill Guerin for inviting Patel, who is clearly the only outsider in the world worthy of participating in such a sacred celebration. Patel, a social media influencer who rose to power by parodying Trump’s wild lies about the 2020 election, drank beers with his team on camera instead of finding Savannah Guthrie’s mother or releasing federal documents about his boss being accused of sexually assaulting a teenager. Greene and most of America’s players may think this entire news cycle was unfair to begin with, but this whole thing is their fault: Ask the Internet not to descend into chaos this The FBI director has this All our experiences are like asking whether a fire is hot or not.
Patel, meanwhile, made the story of the team’s celebration all about him — at least until Trump’s call with the team went viral. American players have every right to love Trump or support his efforts to capitalize on his success, even if they don’t care much about Trump himself. but to be surprise It’s hilarious how angry people are at this painful experience. These players learned 20 minutes ago that not everyone thinks hockey players are unconditionally neutral all the time, especially when they’re surrounded by a deeply unpopular president who’s in the news every day because of his close friendship with the world’s most notorious pedophile. It’s definitely like learning about gravity.
Trump’s ability to inflict blowback on his own loyalists is the oldest game in his book, one well known to potential hanging victim Mike Pence and countless other subordinates. What his social media staff did to Brady Tkachuk was one of the most high-profile releases of his administration. Trump’s people did put words into Tkachuk’s mouth, not knowing or caring that they were very inconvenient (fake) words for the captain of a Canadian NHL team. Tkachuk is the logical endpoint of Trump’s ability to turn people into props.
During these days of constant stupidity, the system worked. Trump got photo opportunities and not only a chance to hang out with cool athletes, but Winner. Patel has to pretend that the best hockey player in the world is his real friend. Athletes visited the Oval Office and had their photos taken with some of the most powerful people living today. Trump paid nothing for the experience, and whatever the cost of Patel’s experience would have been borne by taxpayers. The only group left holding the Bills is the players.
