The gold medal-winning U.S. ladies’s hockey staff turned down Donald Trump’s invitation to his State of the Union handle following his controversial feedback about inviting them to the nation’s capital together with the lads’s staff.
A spokesperson for USA Hockey, which oversees each groups, advised NBC Information that the White Home invited the American ladies to attend the president’s handle however cited “timing and beforehand scheduled educational {and professional} commitments” as causes for the gamers declining the provide.
“We’re sincerely grateful for the invitation prolonged to our gold medal–successful U.S. Girls’s Hockey Crew and deeply recognize the popularity of their extraordinary achievement…They have been honored to be included and are grateful for the acknowledgment,” the spokesperson mentioned.
The information arrives after the U.S. males’s staff took residence gold by defeating rival Canada by a rating of 2-1 in additional time on the Winter Olympics, the very same outcome that the American ladies achieved of their last simply days prior.
The boys’s victory led to a rowdy locker room celebration throughout which FBI Director Kash Patel chugged a bottle of beer and held a telephone as Trump referred to as in to congratulate the successful squad. Trump provided to fly them out to D.C. for the handle on Tuesday, with a White Home go to the next day.
However the president’s celebratory message rapidly veered towards a degrading joke aimed on the American ladies’s staff.
“And now we have to — I have to inform you — we’re going to need to convey the ladies’s staff,” mentioned Trump, whose remark prompted the U.S. males to erupt in laughter. “[If I don’t] do this, I do imagine I in all probability can be impeached, OK?”
Nathan Posner/Anadolu by way of Getty Pictures
Trump’s feedback, and the following response by the lads’s staff, fueled backlash, notably amongst followers of the Skilled Girls’s Hockey League who ripped the president’s “shameful” joke and the “spineless” response to it.
The American ladies’s newest podium-topping victory, sparked by a game-winning aim from Crew USA’s Megan Keller, is their first on the Olympic ice because the staff took gold on the 2018 PyeongChang Video games.
Trump, who was president on the time, congratulated the staff on social media and the squad was later honored as a part of a broader ceremony celebrating Olympic and Paralympic athletes on the White Home.
As GOP management in Congress scrambles to get the American males into Tuesday’s SOTU handle, it’s unclear whether or not members of both Crew USA squad will attend Trump’s proposed White Home go to set for Wednesday.
The PWHL, just like the NHL, is ready to renew play this week after an prolonged break as a result of Milan Cortina Video games.
JHB has reached out to the White Home and USA Hockey for remark.