Before they walked into the White House on Tuesday, the U.S. men's Olympic hockey team stopped. Gold medals still warm from Milan, still buzzing from a night that ended in a Miami nightclub, they paused to let service members hold them. Not a photo op. Players handing over the hardware to the people who serve.

That image is the whole argument.

NBC News covered it under the headline: "Trump ignites culture war around U.S. hockey gold medal winners." Not just wrong. Backwards.

I wrote earlier this week about the press engineering controversy before the Games started — reporters arriving in Milan with the narrative already written, using press conference access to collect the quotes they needed. That was about what happened before the whistle. This is about what happened after America won. The story didn't end with the gold. The revealing part came next.

This Isn't New, and It Isn't Partisan

Visiting the White House after a championship isn't new, and it isn't partisan. In 1980, Jimmy Carter sent Air Force One to Lake Placid to bring the Miracle on Ice team to Washington. He hosted them at the White House. He called it "one of the proudest moments that I've ever experienced." A Democratic president, at the height of the Cold War, was celebrating an American hockey team. Nobody called it a culture war.

Jack Hughes scored the overtime goal that won the men their first gold since the 1980 team. Asked about the White House visit, he didn't hedge. "No matter what your views are," he told the Daily Mail, "we're super excited to go to the White House tomorrow and be a part of that."

Dylan Larkin and Zach Werenski went on Fox & Friends hours after the gold and, unprompted, said what wearing the jersey means. Larkin: "Every time I get the chance to represent the United States of America, I put that jersey on, I'm all in." Werenski: "It's the best country in the world, and you definitely get an appreciation for it when you go overseas."

These aren't talking points. They're hockey players from Indiana and Michigan who went through the U.S. National Team Development Program and said what they actually think. The press deciding their enthusiasm is a problem says more about the press than the players.

Two Girls from the Bay Area, Two Very Different Choices

But the sharpest contrast of these Games isn't between the men's team and the media. It's between two California girlswho grew up across the bay from each other and made very different choices.

Alysa Liu grew up in Oakland. Eileen Gu grew up in San Francisco. Both are daughters of Chinese immigrants. Both were top targets when China launched a government recruitment program in 2019 to attract foreign-born athletes with Chinese heritage ahead of the Beijing Games. The program came for both of them.

Arthur Liu said no. His daughter stayed on Team USA. For that refusal, she and her father became the alleged targets of a Chinese government spying operation before the 2022 Games. She called it "a little bit freaky" when she found out. She competed anyway, finished sixth, retired at 16, came back in 2024, won the World Championship in 2025, arrived in Milan ranked third, and left as the first American woman to win Olympic figure skating gold in 24 years.

Eileen Gu traded her U.S. eligibility for Chinese colors in 2019. She competed for the government of a country that runs a surveillance state, suppresses ethnic minorities, and — by documented record — sent agents to pressure the Liu family.

Before these Games, Gu had 2.1 million Instagram followers. Liu had fewer than 300,000. After Milan, Liu is at 5.3 million and climbing. Gu sits at 3.7 million. The public has its own way of keeping score.

The same media apparatus that covered the men's locker room phone call as a culture war provocation gave Gu a largely frictionless Games. Her choice — to represent the Chinese government's athletic program despite being born and raised in the Bay Area — drew far less scrutiny than players who laughed at a presidential joke. That asymmetry is a tell.

The Political Process Is Not The Problem 

I get it, though. The State of the Union is a partisan event. Inviting gold medalists to attend the same night uses their achievement as a backdrop, and players who didn't seek that backdrop deserve some sympathy. 

This point doesn't survive the evidence, though. Hughes volunteered for this. And the person best positioned to judge whether the men disrespected their female counterparts — their mother, Ellen Weinberg-Hughes, a women's hockey legend who now consults for the women's team — went on the Today show and said the controversy was missing the point entirely. "The men and women sharing dorm rooms and halls and flex floors," she said, "the camaraderie, the synergy, the way the women cheered on the men and the way the men cheered on the women — that's what it's all about. They care about humanity. They care about unity and they care about the country."

The women's team declined the invitation to the State of the Union—a legitimate choice. The men accepted. Also legitimate. Two groups of adults made different calls on the same invitation — and the press turned the gap into a referendum on the men's decency.

Hughes told Today that when he scored the overtime goal, one of his first thoughts was of Megan Keller, whose goal had won the women's gold two days earlier. He and Quinn had watched that game as "the biggest superfans of all time." Keller posted a photo of the two of them embracing with their medals. That's the inside of this team. It just wasn't the story that a press that was committed to anti-Trump talking points wanted to write.

The Problem Isn't the Celebration

America won twelve gold medals in Milan — the most ever by an American Winter Olympic team. Two overtime hockey golds over Canada. A figure skating gold medal ended a 24-year drought. A skater from Oakland who said no to a government spy program came back from retirement and delivered.

Criticizing any government is American. Criticizing any president is American. But a patriotism that can't survive a gold medal celebration — that reads athletes handing medals to soldiers as partisan provocation — isn't really about politics. It's about an inability to let the country be worth cheering for.

They stopped before they walked in. They handed over the medals. Nobody told them to. If that's a culture war, the problem isn't the celebration. It's the viewer.