The U.S. males’s Olympic ice hockey staff attends President Donald Trump’s State of the Union handle to a joint session of Congress within the Home Chamber on the Capitol on February 24, 2026 in Washington, DC.
Kenny Holston/Pool/Getty Photographs
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Kenny Holston/Pool/Getty Photographs
President Trump welcomed the Olympic gold-winning U.S. males’s hockey staff to the Capitol for his State of the Union handle Tuesday night time, amid controversy surrounding FBI Director Kash Patel’s celebrations with the staff and backlash to feedback the president made in regards to the U.S. ladies’s staff.
The lads’s hockey staff gained the gold medal Sunday in an exciting additional time remaining towards rival Canada. It is the primary U.S. gold in males’s ice hockey since 1980, when an underdog American squad pulled off the “Miracle on Ice.”
“Our nation is successful once more,” Trump stated about quarter-hour into his speech.
“To show that time, right here with us tonight is a bunch of winners who simply made your complete nation proud: the boys’s gold medal Olympic hockey staff,” he continued.
The staff entered the balcony of the Home of Representatives, flashing their gold medals to chants of “U.S.A” and an roughly two-minute standing ovation.
Trump additionally introduced he can be giving staff goaltender Connor Hellebuyck, who made 41 saves within the gold medal recreation, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the U.S. authorities’s highest civilian honor.
Trump invited the boys’s staff to the handle in a cellphone name Sunday after the sport, and supplied to move them to Washington on a navy airplane. A video of the cellphone name was shared on social media.
In that video, the president may be heard saying: “I have to inform you, we’ll need to convey the ladies’s staff. You do know that,” and joking that he would “most likely be impeached” if he did not invite the ladies.
The ladies’s staff declined the White Home’s invitation to Tuesday’s handle citing “timing and beforehand scheduled educational {and professional} commitments.”
Trump stated in his speech that the ladies’s staff would quickly be coming to the White Home. The staff didn’t instantly reply to an NPR request for affirmation of the upcoming go to.
FBI Director Kash Patel has additionally confronted criticism after he was seen collaborating in post-game locker room celebrations from Milan in movies posted to social media.
An FBI spokesman had stated within the days main as much as the sport that Patel’s journey to Milan was primarily for skilled functions, and the federal government could be reimbursed for any private bills. White Home spokesperson Steven Cheung reiterated on social media Sunday that Patel was in Italy “assembly with regional companions and safety groups.”
However Democrats have decried the movies exhibiting Patel consuming and celebrating within the locker room as an indication of presidency waste of taxpayer {dollars}.
Patel addressed the criticism on his private X account Sunday, writing, “For the very involved media – sure, I like America and was extraordinarily humbled when my associates, the newly minted Gold Medal winners on Workforce USA, invited me into the locker room to have a good time this historic second with the boys- Best nation on earth and biggest sport on earth.”
Patel has beforehand confronted scrutiny over his private travels aboard a authorities airplane. Earlier than he took public workplace, he incessantly criticized his predecessor Chris Wray for his use of the FBI airplane.
