Kash Patel hijacks Team USA’s Olympic hockey win
Leave it to Donald Trump and his administration to ruin something joyful like Team USA’s men’s hockey Olympic win and turn it into a tawdry, self-serving spectacle. What started as a unifying, goosebumps-inducing sports moment quickly became a case study in how the Trump administration degrades every institution it touches — from the White House to the FBI to the Winter Olympics.
There is a particular kind of hypocrisy so brazen, so cartoonishly on-the-nose, that it almost defies satire. FBI Director Kash Patel, who spent years burning with righteous fury over the perceived corruption of the bureau’s leadership class — who took to his podcast to demand that former director Christopher Wray’s government-funded G5 be grounded, who testified before Congress in barely contained outrage over FBI directors using taxpayer planes for personal travel — has now been caught doing precisely that and more, and worse. And he did it with a beer in his hand and a gold medal around his neck that he did nothing to earn.
Patel flew on a government jet to Italy, arriving — with extraordinary convenience — just in time to catch the United States men’s hockey team win gold in Milan, defeating Canada 2-1 in overtime for its first Olympic title since 1980. After watching from a box, the director stormed the locker room.
“F**k yeah,” he said, craning his head into cellphone videos next to star Dylan Larkin. He had a beer in hand while on the phone with Trump. “I’m f**kin’ on it,” he said, pledging to the president he’d return the team in time to attend Tuesday night’s State of the Union address.
Patel spent Sunday celebrating in Milan while, back in the U.S., a 21-year-old gunman from North Carolina obsessed with conspiracy theories attempted to assassinate the president at Mar-a-Lago, and while American tourists were stranded in Mexico, forced to shelter in place while violence erupted from drug cartels angry at the killing of “El Mencho,” the Jalisco drug lord in an operation that was reportedly assisted by American intelligence and security.
When the backlash came for Patel, he responded the way every Trump-era official does when caught behaving like a frat boy on the public dime: He called it patriotism. “For the very concerned media,” he wrote on X, “yes, I love America.”
Patel’s spokesperson insisted that the purpose of the Italy visit was official: meetings with Italian law enforcement, consultations with Ambassador Tilman Fertitta, oversight of FBI Olympic security coordination. But those claims were undercut by timing. The director showed up at the very end of the Olympics, coincidentally just in time for the gold medal match. Last July, Patel tweeted that he would attend the Olympics if the USA men’s hockey team made the final match.
Patel’s defenders in MAGA media are trying desperately to turn this into the equivalent of Barack Obama’s tan suit — a nothingburger inflated by hysterical liberals.
Patel’s defenders in MAGA media are trying desperately to turn this into the equivalent of Barack Obama’s tan suit — a nothingburger inflated by hysterical liberals. “Is Kash Patel not allowed to enjoy his weekends?” asked right-wing influencer CJ Pearson. Will Cain declared that every proud American is smiling through the video. Clay Travis argued critics are why “no normal men vote for them.”
Barstool founder Dave Portnoy posted on X, “Anybody who is mad about this video has a dump in their pants.” But that didn’t stop one of his writers, Eric Nathan, from slamming the FBI director. Patel “agreed to protect pedophiles for the government and in exchange he gets to do make a wish side quests on taxpayer money,” Nathan wrote on X. “Like, it actually makes a ton of sense, he took a job he’s wildly unqualified for and agreed not to do correctly or at all, so he might as well whoop it up before he goes to hell.” Barstool’s Jack Mac asked on TikTok, “What is Kash Patel doing in Italy? Why is he there? Nancy Guthrie is still missing. Why is he there? Did his girlfriend have a performance or something?”
Others in the Trump administration piled on the media-bashing to celebrate Team USA’s Olympic win. “Find yourself an FBI Director who loves America as much as Kash, a first generation American,” Richard Grenell posted on X.
Despite the excuses, it’s hard to ignore the sense of apparent panic. This isn’t about one beer. It’s about a pattern.
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It’s about SWAT protection reportedly assigned to Patel’s girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, a country singer and right-wing activist. It’s about flights that blur the line between official duty and personal indulgence. It’s about using Olympic security as a pretext for VIP box seats. It’s about treating federal office as a rewards program for loyalty to Trump.
At the height of 2025’s Department of Government Efficiency reorganizations and firings, Elon Musk demanded federal workers list five things they accomplished each week or risk being fired. What are Patel’s five? Chugged a beer. Got a medal placed around his neck. Sang Toby Keith. Posted a defensive X thread. Lashed out at “very concerned media.”
Meanwhile, career FBI agents were purged for working Jan. 6 cases or watchdog assignments. Others were pulled off human trafficking and violent crime investigations to assist with immigration crackdowns. Today marks the 23rd day of the Nancy Guthrie search, and agents from D.C. to Phoenix are grinding through real cases — while their boss pops champagne overseas.
The optics of self-enrichment are awful because they are real.
Trump officials treat their jobs as opportunities for personal branding, score-settling and increasing their personal wealth. It’s the most consistent feature of this administration. From artificial intelligence videos on Truth Social depicting Trump punching a Canadian hockey player to the official White House account posting an AI image of a bald eagle drowning a Canadian goose, they degrade even the most harmless symbols of patriotism into trolling exercises.
The hypocrisy of it all is numbing. For years MAGA has crowed that sports shouldn’t be political — unless it’s right-wing politics, in which case it’s apparently mandatory.
The hypocrisy of it all is numbing. For years MAGA has crowed that sports shouldn’t be political — unless it’s right-wing politics, in which case it’s apparently mandatory.
Trump told the men’s hockey team he would “begrudgingly” invite the women’s gold medal team to the White House, too, or else he’d be impeached. The men laughed. The women who made history and carried the medal count? Their achievements were reduced to a misogynistic punchline by a president who campaigned on supposedly protecting women’s sports.
Disaffected MAGA voters — the self-described “America First” crowd — see it. They didn’t sign up for taxpayer-funded side quests. They didn’t vote for FBI directors who look like they’re auditioning for Barstool content.
The political context makes it worse. According to data analyst Henry Enten, Trump’s approval among independents is the weakest it has ever been at this point in either term — plunging dramatically compared to prior years. Pre-State of the Union polling shows a net approval deep underwater, far worse than in 2017, 2019 or 2020.
Independents decide elections. They recoil from corruption and chaos. They are not impressed by locker-room theatrics paid for with public funds. A recent Washington Post poll found that, by a 26-point margin, people think Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself.
MAGA media thinks bluster will save them. They think yelling “fake scandal” loudly enough will transform optics into victimhood. It’s worked before, after all.
But this is different. Voters are tired. They are tired of watching serious institutions hollowed out by unserious people and of being told obvious self-dealing is just “blowing off steam.”
MAGA media’s reflexive defense of Patel will backfire on the White House because it reinforces the very narrative sinking Trump with independents: that this is the most corrupt and self-serving administration in modern American history.
The optics are bad because the ethics are worse. No amount of right-wing outrage laundering is going to change that.
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