Captain of the U.S. women’s ice hockey team, Hilary Knight, responded to comments U.S. President Donald Trump made to the lads’s team after each won gold on the Winter Olympics, saying his wisecrack about also having to ask the ladies to the White House to have fun their achievement is “overshadowing” the success of each.
While celebrating its gold medal win against Canada on Sunday, the lads’s team received a call from Trump, who invited them to Tuesday’s State of the Union speech.
“I have to let you know, we’re going to should bring the ladies’s team,” he said. “You do know that. I do consider I probably can be impeached.”
A video of the interaction, which shows a number of the players on the lads’s team laughing on the remark, went viral shortly after.
Hilary Knight celebrates after scoring an equalizer during a women’s ice hockey gold-medal game between the US and Canada on the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, on Feb. 19, 2026.
AP Photo/Petr David Josek
Knight, a five-time Olympic medallist, shared her perspective on Trump’s comment during a SportsCenter interview on Wednesday.
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“I assumed it was kind of a distasteful joke, and unfortunately, that’s overshadowing a variety of the success, the success of just women on the Olympics carrying for Team USA and having amazing gold medal feats,” she said.
“We’re just specializing in celebrating the ladies in our room, the extraordinary efforts, and proceed to have fun three gold medals in program history in addition to the double gold for each men’s and girls’s at the identical time, and really not detract from that with a distasteful joke,” Knight continued.
“I feel the blokes were in a tricky spot, so I feel it’s a shame this storyline and narrative has sort of blown up and overshadowing that connection and real interest in each other and cheering one another on,” she added.
Trump’s remarks and the response from the lads’s team prompted a wave of criticism, which Jack Hughes, who scored the game-winning goal in time beyond regulation against Canada to clinch gold, addressed during an appearance on Good Morning America on Tuesday.
“Individuals are so negative about things,” he said. “I feel everyone in that locker room knows how much we support … how proud we’re of them [the women’s team]. The identical way we feel about them, they feel about us.”
In line with the Latest York Times, in a separate interview outside of a Miami nightclub on Monday night, Hughes told reporters, “Every part is so political, we’re athletes, we’re so proud to represent the U.S., and if you get the possibility to go to the White House and meet the president … That’s so patriotic.”
The boys’s team attended Trump’s address on Tuesday evening and was greeted by a standing ovation from Democrats and Republicans alike as they waved and raised their medals to the group.
Members of the Team USA men’s hockey team, including goalie Connor Hellebuyck, wave to the audience as U.S. President Donald Trump delivers his State of the Union address during a joint session of Congress on the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Kelly Pannek, a two-time Olympic gold medallist, PWHL Minnesota Frost player and Knight’s Olympic teammate, told media on Wednesday that the rhetoric in Trump’s phone call didn’t come as a shock.
“The phone call, specifically, it’s not surprising, to be frank. I don’t know why we’d expect otherwise,” she said, but added that each teams were celebratory of the opposite’s achievements.
“I feel that’s something everyone knows, being there, what it felt prefer to have their support throughout the tournament,” Pannek said.
“To support them, and the way great a moment it was for everybody that was a fan of each teams to return together and say how great it was … It really was such a special feeling being there, even with the ability to spend the time with them after their win and the respect that they were showing us,” she continued.
The ladies’s team declined Trump’s invitation to the White House on Monday, citing timing and “previously scheduled academic and skilled commitments.”
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