While the Team USA men’s hockey team was reveling in its gold medal, sudden-death additional time win over Team Canada over the weekend, former NASCAR driver Danica Patrick was taking a shot on the silver medalists.
“If Canada had been smart and develop into the 51st state, they’d be gold medalists at once,” Patrick, 43, shared via her Instagram Story on Sunday, February 22, over a photograph of Team Canada wearing their silver medals. “Too soon?”
She appears to be referring to President Donald Trump’s 2025 push to make the USA’ northern neighbors its own state — one that will be greater than the remainder of the country combined.
“The USA can’t subsidize a rustic for $200 billion a 12 months,” Trump told reporters within the Oval Office last March, “We don’t need their cars. We don’t need their energy. We don’t need their lumber. We don’t need anything that they offer. We do it because we wish to be helpful. But it surely comes a degree if you just can’t try this.”
Trump added that Canada can be higher off as a component of the USA.
Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister on the time, railed against Trump’s proposal, insisting that his country has little interest in joining the U.S.
“What he wants is to see a complete collapse of the Canadian economy because that’ll make it easier to annex us,” he said of Trump, in line with a story for ABC News on the time.
Patrick, an outspoken supporter of Trump, has publicly taken his side multiple times since he re-entered office last January. Most recently, she was a vocal opponent to the NFL’s decision to have Bad Bunny headline the Super Bowl LX halftime show.
She and other conservative pundits bashed the choice, citing Bad Bunny’s decision to perform almost exclusively in Spanish, his previous opposition to Trump’s immigration policies and arguing that the Puerto Rican artist is just not American. (Bad Bunny, real name Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, was born in Puerto Rico, a territory of the USA. Puerto Ricans are Americans.)
“The Super Bowl is probably the most highly watched show that we’ve got on television in the entire 12 months,” Patrick said during an October 2025 episode of the “War Room” podcast. “127 million individuals are estimated to look at it. It’s the crown jewel on television and in sports, particularly. It’s where we come together as a rustic. We enjoy it, we’ve got parties, we love watching the halftime performance. We all know we like to sing along to the halftime performance and it’s normally one among people who’s very versatile across so many various age ranges.”
She continued, “I don’t have any problem with someone acting at halftime that is just not from the USA, although Bad Bunny is technically a citizen because he was born in Puerto Rico. He wasn’t necessarily born in America. I don’t care where you’re actually born. What I care about is that I can sing along to the music. His music is nearly nothing in English.”
Trump also opposed the choice, telling Newsmax in a phone interview in October, “I’ve never heard of him. I don’t know who he’s. I don’t know why they’re doing it. It’s, like, crazy.”
He added, “I believe it’s absolutely ridiculous.”
Trump later ranted concerning the show itself after it aired, calling the show he at one time claimed he wouldn’t watch “absolutely terrible, one among the worst, EVER!” in a post via Truth Social.