OPINION:
There’s a new rule in play: U.S. Olympians (especially gold medal winners) receive favorable media coverage — if they bash their own country, or at least refrain from saying they’re proud to be American.
They must never utter anything approaching a polite word about President Trump.
To receive the most fawning reception, athletes should renounce their Team USA membership and carry the flag of an adversarial nation.
That last one is a real thing, of course, but more on that in a moment.
We know that the American left is extremely uncomfortable with the idea of being American and is mortified at the mere thought of ever expressing pride in it.
At the just-concluded Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, journalists repeatedly peppered U.S. athletes with political questions, with the clear expectation that the competitors would tear into their own country and Mr. Trump.
Some were happy to oblige.
Thus continued the media’s slow-motion suicide, which involves turning absolutely everything into a political issue and squeezing the fun out of life.
The HuffPost published a great story if you’re looking for something to read while hiding under your bed in the fetal position.
On X, the caption was, “If waving the American flag or chanting ‘USA!’ turns you off right now, you’re not alone.”
The story amounts to a written therapy session for demented leftists, who are unable to permit themselves to root for American athletes because they hate Mr. Trump so much.
The incredible thing about this HuffPost piece is that it was written before the U.S. men’s hockey team beat Canada to win the gold medal. Because, boy, did that set off an avalanche of angst among leftists.
U.S. star Jack Hughes scored the game-winning goal in overtime and then gave perhaps the most pro-American postgame interview in history.
“This is all about our country right now,” he told NBC. “I love the USA. We’re so proud to be Americans.”
You could sense lefties across the country getting ready to be outraged.
Then it happened. Mr. Trump called into the champions’ locker room, which presidents do, and invited them to attend the State of the Union address.
The president joked that the men would have to share the spotlight with the U.S. women’s hockey team, which also won gold by beating Canada in overtime.
“I must tell you, we’re going to have to bring the women’s team — you do know that,” Mr. Trump said to laughter.
If he didn’t invite the women, “I do believe I probably would be impeached,” he said.
Journalists declared themselves to be somehow offended by this, which is ridiculous and proof that they are addicted to outrage. Still, they were mostly mad at the hockey players for eagerly accepting the invitation.
(For their part, the women’s team declined, but the president said he would invite them for their own White House visit to honor their gold medal.)
In The Athletic, owned by The New York Times, the men’s team was vilified because they didn’t spurn the president.
“The U.S. men’s hockey team won gold — and then lost the room,” declared Athletic columnist and alleged sports fan Jerry Brewer.
For USA Today, Mary Clarke opined that “USA men’s hockey team utterly failed to meet the cultural moment.”
Contrast this with the media adoration of the aforementioned U.S. athlete who competes for a rival nation.
Eileen Gu, the American-born, Stanford-educated freestyle skier, has represented China since 2019 and has been paid as much as $14 million by the Chinese Communist Party over the past several years. China, of course, is one of the greatest violators of human rights in the world.
You might think that athletically defecting to the brutal communists would make a dent in the positive news coverage she receives, but you’d be wrong.
Charlotte Harpur at The Athletic absolutely gushed, describing Ms. Gu as “scientist, politician, skier, model, and student” and said she is “like a magician, the audience dazzled by her mastery.”
Time magazine put her on the cover under the title, “The freestyle skier taking the world by storm.”
It wasn’t always this way in our media.
In a segment unearthed by the X account @WesternLensman, a conservative video producer who excels in finding old clips, a 2012 MSNBC panel scolded a hockey player who declined to visit the White House when Barack Obama was president.
“This is the kind of hyperpartisanship that just irritates everybody,” Democrat commentator Neera Tanden said back then.
They believe exactly the opposite now and will shun anyone who disagrees.
Judging from journalists’ actions, it’s reasonable to wonder: If this is truly the way they feel, then why not just follow Ms. Gu and join the other side already?
• Tim Murtaugh is a Washington Times columnist and founder of Line Drive Public Affairs. He served as a senior adviser on the 2024 Trump campaign and as communications director on the 2020 Trump campaign.
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