AS I SEE IT COLUMN: Team USA’s disgraceful White House visit

When all but five members of Team USA allowed themselves to be pawns in a Trump photo op, they touched off a firestorm of controversy in the U.S. and Canada.

“It’s an honour to be invited” might have been acceptable in previous times, with presidents who were “normal.” But nothing about Trump is normal. He is an existential threat not just to Canadian sovereignty but to world peace.

For context, there is a long and honourable precedent of pro athletes from the NBA, NFL, Major League Baseball and soccer who have either declined White House invitations or said in advance they would not attend if invited, so it’s not like an athlete has to accept a presidential invitation.

Canada’s Braden Holtby, the goaltender who led the Washington Capitals to a Stanley Cup championship in 2018, turned down Trump’s invitation to the White House. At the time he said “I believe in a world where humans are treated with respect…I have to stay true to my values.”

Sadly, Team USA has a different set of values.

By willingly being Trump’s political puppets, it’s clear that Team USA’s values are such that they are completely on board with the president attacking Canada, imposing punishing tariffs, killing Venezuelan fishermen, ordering masked ICE agents to send fellow Americans to deportation camps without any trial, detaining 5-year-olds, putting children in cages, mocking our Prime Minister and threatening to annex Canada.

Every player on the U.S. Men’s hockey team has many Canadian teammates. Connor Hellebuyck, Brady Tkachuk and Auston Matthews play in cities where the fan base is 100% Canadian, and yet they were somehow okay being political props to a president who mocks their fellow players, their fans and the country that pays them millions of dollars? Make that make sense.

Team USA is rightly facing intense backlash, but the American player who has the most explaining to do in this disgusting public relations debacle is Leafs’ captain Auston Matthews. Matthews is Mexican-American. How Matthews could abide posing with a president who is kidnapping fellow Hispanics – his people – and who could come after his mother and his relatives, is utterly impossible to comprehend.

Matthews has this quote tattooed on his chest: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” If Matthews truly believes that, how could he stay silent given Trump’s many illegal acts? I hope spending a few hours with the felon was worth it for Matthews, who just flushed his reputation down the toilet.

Posing for pictures with one of the most reviled persons in the world isn’t apolitical; it is implicitly condoning the president’s hatred, cruelty and criminality. Team USA is okay with all of that. They are also strangely okay with Trump being best friends with a convicted pedophile and being mentioned thousands of times in the Epstein files.

The “I’m just an athlete, I’m not making a political statement,” is a lame excuse that does not apply here. If you smile with someone found guilty of committing over 30 felonies, put your gold medal around his neck and generally look overjoyed at being in his company, that is the very definition of a political statement. Team USA knowingly normalized a madman.

Silence is complicity. What was unsaid by Hellebuyck and his teammates speaks volumes about their (lack of) character. Team USA’s attendance conveyed legitimacy on a deranged president who traffics in authoritarianism.

Clearly, growing up in a country where they have been indoctrinated since birth about America’s laughable exceptionalism, affected Team USA’s inability to think about the message they were sending by being buddies with a monster.

Team USA obviously had the right to accept the Trump regime’s invitation, just as fans have the right to be outraged that Hellebuyck and company were so happy to be in the presence of someone who should be in jail, not in the White House.

The U.S. hockey team will forever have their gold medals. But now that they allowed themselves to be used as pawns in Trump’s propaganda, their legacies will permanently be tarnished for posing with a corrupt, creepy, convicted criminal while pretending everything was normal.