By Charles C. W. Cooke
Wednesday, February 25, 2026
I have one more quick thought on the absurd hockey panic that I wrote about yesterday: It’s
that, in their most essential form, most of the complaints about the hockey
team’s willingness to interact with President Trump are just gussied-up attacks
on pluralism.
The most common argument I’ve seen advanced against the
USA men’s team from fans of the game who claim to be distraught is that this or
that player should not have gone to the White House or answered President
Trump’s phone call because he “has a gay sister” or “has a Mexican mother” or
has at some point or another expressed political views that differ from the
GOP’s.
But this is absurd. First off, this country has a long
tradition of athletes going to the White House after a big win, and of
their doing so irrespective of whether they like the president who invited
them. It is not “political” to go to the White House, or to receive a
congratulatory phone call. The president is the president whether one approves
of him or not. To suggest that one should go only if one endorses him
wholeheartedly is to recommend the sort of silly, petulant thinking that leads
people who are upset about the most recent election to insist that the incumbent
is “not my president.” He is, actually. That’s how the system works.
Worse still, it is to propose that one ought only ever to
associate with people who share one’s political preferences — as if talking to
a person with whom one disagrees, or shaking his hand, were a form of
ideological treason. That, clearly, is no way to run a big, bustling, diverse
country such as ours. The last election was decided by just over 2 million
votes out of more than 150 million. Which, pray, would be more “divisive”? For
the USA team to decline to visit the White House because not all of its members
agree with everything the winner of that election believes, or for the USA team
to go while retaining full control of their own consciences? I know my answer.
Had the players been expected to endorse a particular policy, or to proselytize for a
particular religion, that would be one thing. So, too, would it have been a
problem if the handful who declined had been berated for their choice. But they
weren’t. Almost to the letter, Donald Trump followed the same playbook as had
Jimmy Carter back in 1980. It was fine.
When faced with arguments such as these, the cavilers
typically switch gears and attempt to redefine the terms of the debate. “Ah,”
they say, “but this isn’t about politics, this is about basic decency.”
Besides, Trump isn’t a “normal president,” and the issues at stake here “aren’t
debatable.” But, of course, this is self-serving nonsense, designed to
construct an indefensible double standard and to cast the speaker’s preferences
as inviolable rules of the road.
As someone with strong political opinions of his own, I
have no problem believing that those who oppose President Trump’s position on,
say, transgender athletes are genuinely upset by his stance. My problem is that
they do not extend the same courtesy to their critics. Pro-lifers, for
instance, believe that unborn babies are humans, and that killing those babies
is murder — or even genocide. If they so wished, they, too, could
construct a universe in which everything other than their own preferences were
up for debate. But it wouldn’t work — and it shouldn’t work — because,
whether they are right or wrong (and I’m with them), we all have to live
together under the same flag, in the same system, with the same neighbors.
Ultimately, being an American involves accepting that the
people who oppose you on some extremely important things are also Americans,
and agreeing to coexist with them nevertheless. The progressive hockey fans who
are devastated that their favorite players were happy to go to the White House
are simply refusing to do that. That is their right, but there is no reason for
anyone else to indulge their solipsism.
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