White House fakes comments by Trump supporter Brady Tkachuk as Team USA controversy lingers

After a week or so of abusing the clueless 20-somethings for serving as Donald Trump’s latest dupes, it only seems fair to credit the few USA hockey lads for their reluctant mea culpas.

Several of the players who were involved in the debauched postgame celebration with debased FBI director Kash Patel that devolved into a misogynistic phone call with President Trump have issued a range of regrets in the past few days.

Good for them, I guess.

Maybe they’ll think twice next time before laughing about women — in this instance, their Olympic gold-medal counterparts, and the best women’s team ever assembled — being treated as their inferiors.

Maybe.

In his congratulatory call after a golden goal win over Canada on Sunday (a call he did not make to the women’s team three days earlier), Trump invited the men to the White House, then said, “We’re going to have to bring the woman’s team. You do know that?” Otherwise, Trump said, “I do believe I probably would be impeached.”

The men laughed.

The public raged.

Count me among the angry masses.

I took my shots at Team USA midweek, when I noted that any random group of young, white, millionaire American males are more likely than not to agree with Trump, and might have even voted for him, and therefore they innately took little issue in serving as his pawns last Sunday morning and then again Tuesday, when 20 of the 25 players visited the White House and attended Trump’s unhinged State of the Union address. I noted, however, that they shouldn’t realistically be expected to act differently, and that their transgression was far less concerning than, say, Bryson DeChambeau, Trump’s golf mascot.

It quickly got worse.

» READ MORE: Marcus Hayes: The outrage over Team USA’s connection with Trump is dumb — and it’s what he wants

Ever eager to distract from his administration’s endless corruption, he could not leave the boys alone. Not even if it meant cannibalizing one of their own.

The White House used AI to generate a false statement from Trump supporter and Team USA star Brady Tkachuk in a postgame TikTok video:

“They booed our national anthem, so I had to come out and teach those maple syrup eating (bleepers) a lesson.”

The AI fake is part of a post that includes highlights from the game. The post indicates that AI was used in its construction, it does not specify which parts were fake.

Tkachuk specified which parts were fake on Thursday.

“Well, it’s clearly fake, because it’s not my voice, not my lips moving,” Tkachuk told reporters. “I know that those words would never come out of my mouth. So, I can’t do anything about it. … It’s not my voice. It’s not what I was saying. I would never say that. That’s not who I am, so I guess I don’t like that video because that would never come out of my mouth and never had that thought.”

Maybe. Maybe not.

Despite Tkachuk’s protestations, the White House has not deleted the post. He’s their weapon of the day.

Tkachuk also denied hollering out that Trump should “close the northern border” during Trump’s phone call. Hard to disprove that one, especially since it took him four days to do so.

It should be noted: Tkachuk not only plays for a Canadian team, the Ottawa Senators, he’s also their captain.

This is delicious.

» READ MORE: Marcus Hayes: Megan Keller’s golden goal for Team USA should go down as one of the biggest moments in Olympic history

It’s hard to feel anything other than Schadenfreude for Tkachuk, or for any of the other players who declined to issue public apologies until public opinion swung so heavily against them. It might have been a week of pure celebration of a historic win. It was the first men’s hockey gold since the Miracle on Ice in 1980, and it was sweet revenge for the 2010 gold-medal loss that, like Sunday’s, was decided on an overtime goal.

That goal-scorer, Jack Hughes, who sacrificed his smile to a high stick in the game, almost gets it.

He attested that the men’s and women’s teams commingle and support each other, which is true … and then, like the sheltered, self-unaware, entitled 24-year-old that he is, Hughes chastised critics of the men’s team thusly:

“Everything is so political. We’re athletes.”

Really, Jack? Just athletes, huh?

Later that day, Hughes and four Team USA teammates posed for a picture with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

Hughes and two Team USA teammates wore MAGA hats.

You know. Trump hats. Political hats.

You can’t make it up.

Asked this week by reporters if he agreed with some of his teammates’ recent apologies, Hughes replied, “Yeah,” then deflected with drivel.

Fortunately, other players were more sincere.

“Looking back at it now, I think it was a mistake,” Senators defenseman and Team USA teammate Jake Sanderson told reporters. “But I think things got blown out of proportion a little bit. You know, we have nothing but the utmost respect for the women. I think if we were to do it again, I think we wouldn’t do that, and we made a mistake. … We love the women.”

Bruins goalie Jeremy Swayman told reporters, “We should have reacted differently.”

Bruins defenseman Charlie McAvoy said he and many of his teammates were “certainly sorry for how we responded in that moment.”

Significantly, none of them issued any apology unprovoked. None of them apologized on his own.

Tkachuk was even less accountable:

“Honestly, it was just a whirlwind of a moment. Can’t be in control of what somebody says. It just caught us off-guard a little bit, talking to the president.”

No remorse detected.

As for the women, they now have twice rejected invitations to visit Trump & Co., both for Tuesday’s circus and another invitation floated later in the week. Their statement:

“Players are back competing with their professional and collegiate teams and are in the midst of their season. They’re honored and grateful to be invited and any opportunity to visit the White House as a team will be based on their schedules once their seasons conclude.”

Hall of Fame goalie Dominik Hašek applauded the women’s refusal to be used as political props by a man who not only ignored them, and not only demeaned them, but has yet to apologize: “Your president is a big liar and a fraud who abuses his position to insult and bully his fellow citizens.”

Eccentric rap star Flavor Flav even invited the women to come party with him in Las Vegas as long as a hotelier and an airline help with travel and accommodations.

Hey, it’s more than Trump lapdog Kid Rock would ever do.

As might be expected, the women are dealing with the snub with a measure of grace and resignation that neither Trump nor most of the men’s team would ever be able to muster.

“With the phone call specifically, it’s not surprising, to be frank,” USA forward Kelly Pannek told reporters Wednesday. “So I don’t know why we expect differently.”

It’s depressing to realize that the players on arguably the best team in the history of women’s hockey find themselves the victims of Trump’s narcissism, his administration’s piggishness, and much of the country’s indifference to both.

“I think there’s a genuine level of support there and respect,” between the men’s and women’s teams, Hilary Knight, the women’s captain, told ESPN. “I think that’s being overshadowed by a quick lapse. I think the guys were in a tough spot.”

It was a spot they did not create for themselves. It was a spot in which they failed the women, their country, and themselves.

And it is a spot in which many of them have chosen to linger.