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Crew USA Olympic hockey hero Jack Hughes spoke about his assist for his nation’s girls’s hockey group after his group was the topic of backlash for laughing at a joke by President Donald Trump concerning the girls’s group.
Throughout an interview on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Present” Friday, Hughes opened up about his respect for the ladies’s group after McAfee appeared to reference the controversy by joking that Hughes and his teammates “hate” the ladies gamers.
“We’re hanging out with them a lot, the ladies’s group. We had been supporting them. Like, we had been at their video games, they had been at our video games,” Hughes stated.
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Jack Hughes of the US celebrates after a gold medal win throughout towards Canadaat Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Enviornment through the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic video games Feb. 22, 2026, in Milan, Italy. (Elsa/Getty Pictures)
Hughes then appeared to handle the current criticism of his group for its response to Trump’s joke.
“Like all these individuals speaking, what number of of them watched their gold medal sport? Me and Quinn Hughes had been on the sport. We had been on the sport till like additional time ended on the glass, and we had been leaping up and down so excited for these women, so excited they gained,” Hughes stated.
“And what number of of those individuals watched the gold medal sport, watched their semifinals sport? Like 10 of the ten of our gamers went to their sport within the round-robin. Like, we supported them a lot, and we’re so pleased with them. We’re so blissful that they gained, they usually introduced a gold medal again and that, , I stated it, the lads’s and ladies’s group each introduced gold medals again. So, simply unbelievable for USA hockey.”
Hughes, who scored the game-winning additional time objective towards Canada to win gold, mirrored on his interplay with the participant on the U.S. girls’s group who did the identical, Megan Keller.
“Me and her had an important second within the cafeteria after her gold medal sport. We performed Slovakia the subsequent evening, and it was like a late sport. And we had been within the pasta line — me and Megan. They had been simply on the brink of exit once more, and I simply gave her a large hug, and I stated, ‘I am so blissful for you. I am so pleased with you,'” Hughes stated.
“A pair nights later, noticed her once more within the [cafeteria]and we took an important image and, uh, she simply gave me an enormous hug and was so pumped for me as effectively.”
Hughes instructed reporters after the sport the very first thing he thought of when the puck went in was Keller, who scored the golden objective for the US girls’s group towards Canada three days earlier.
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The controversy surrounding the lads’s group stemmed from a locker room telephone name between the gamers and Trump proper after their gold medal win over Canada.
Trump instructed the lads’s group after inviting them to Tuesday’s State of the Union tackle that he’d “have” to ask the ladies’s group, in any other case “I most likely could be impeached.” The group laughed in response, prompting immense backlash.
A number of mainstream media retailers penned op-eds condemning the lads’s group for laughing on the joke after which visiting the White Home to have fun and Trump’s State of the Union tackle.
The USA’ Jack Hughes (86), who scored the successful additional time objective, celebrates after defeating Canada within the males’s ice hockey gold medal sport on the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy Feb. 22, 2026. (AP Photograph/Carolyn Kaster)
U.S. girls’s hockey captain Hilary Knight stated on Wednesday’s version of ESPN’s “SportsCenter” that Trump’s “distasteful joke” has “overshadow[ed]” the ladies’s success.
“I believed it was type of a distasteful joke, and, sadly, that’s overshadowing a whole lot of the success, the success of simply girls on the Olympics carrying for Crew USA and having superb gold medal feats,” Knight stated.
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“We’re simply specializing in celebrating the ladies in our room, the extraordinary efforts, and proceed to have fun three gold medals in program historical past in addition to the double gold for each males’s and ladies’s on the identical time. And actually not detract from that with a distasteful joke.”
Hughes’ mom, Ellen, a former Crew USA participant and present participant growth employees member, stated the gamers solely cared about “carry[ing] a lot unity to a bunch and to a rustic.”
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