After a Winter Olympic Video games of athletes celebrating one another as a lot as they did successful, the response from the Trump administration is equal elements disheartening and gross.
These are people who find themselves functionally incapable of seeing the Olympics as something however a possibility to show their xenophobic loathing of different international locations and to have fun victory as a form of violent domination.
In brief, the Trump group merely didn’t perceive something about these Olympics.
Maybe the highest-profile instance of this was the diminutive FBI Director Kash Patel partying with the U.S. males’s hockey group in your dime.
Or possibly it’s that, after the boys’s hockey group beat Canada for the gold, the official White Home X account posted an image—which we will all safely assume is AI slop—of a bald eagle attacking a Canadian goose on a frozen lake. Beating Canada in a hockey sport apparently means we’ve got subjugated the whole nation? Terrific.
Or maybe it’s the AI slop video of President Donald Trump—the largest, most pathetic starfucker there ever was—inserting himself into the sport so he might punch a Canadian hockey participant.
This conduct can be disgusting at any time, nevertheless it’s particularly jarring after an Olympics the place the athletes themselves made aware choices to indicate take care of one another—together with their rivals.
Nowhere was this clearer than in determine skating, the place U.S. skaters banded collectively to cheer different international locations’ skaters on, with Ilia Malinin taking time to congratulate Mikhail Shaidorov for his gold medal—even after Malinin’s didn’t place in any respect for his free skate efficiency.
And after Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto was inundated with reporters forcing cameras in her face, she discovered that she misplaced the gold to U.S. skater Alysa Liu. Liu’s teammate, Amber Glenn, rushed to consolation Sakamoto, telling one reporter to cease making an attempt to movie her crying.
Nevertheless it wasn’t simply determine skaters.
After Australian snowboarder Valentino Guseli unexpectedly made it into the finals of the large air competitors, Swiss snowboarder Jonas Hasler carried Guseli round on his shoulders in celebration.
And we additionally have been handled to the adorableness of “Dads Podium,” the place all three twin moguls winners have been joined by their companions and younger kids.
It additionally wasn’t simply athletes.
The closing ceremony highlighted how vital togetherness was to the video games, with Worldwide Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry telling athletes in her closing remarks, “You confirmed us that the Olympic Video games are a spot for everybody. A spot the place sport brings us collectively.”
She additionally thanked the Italian individuals for his or her graciousness towards the athletes.
“You celebrated your champions and also you cheered for athletes of each nation, displaying that keenness and respect can reside aspect by aspect,” Coventry mentioned.
The notion that folks can take care of one another—whilst sports activities rivals—and that connection issues greater than jingoism and xenophobia is totally international to individuals like Trump. The one factor he is aware of the right way to have fun is the subjugation of others.
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Sadly, it seems just like the U.S. males’s hockey group is completely down for this form of factor, eagerly accepting Trump’s invitation to his State of the Union tackle on Tuesday.
The plans for it already sound gross, with Home Speaker Mike Johnson making an attempt to interrupt the Home rule that claims that no particular visitors are allowed on the ground. He says he’s “making an attempt to work out logistics to see if there’s some method to maybe get them into the gallery and the doorways, wave and obtain the applause they’re due.”
Proposing to interrupt legislative guidelines to do some xenophobic screaming about AMERICA is so on model for this administration that it feels just like the writers’ room for this season is getting lazy.
However sadly, it’s actual. At the least the remainder of us can fall again on our recollections of what it seems like when athletes come collectively and take care of one another.
