Ellen Hughes isn’t taking the bait.
Even in this hyper divisive political climate, there’s things we can all agree on, right? Dolly Parton is a national treasure, nothing hits quite like a 7am airport beer, both the men and women’s American hockey teams beating Canada and earning gold medals is awesome… oh wait, not that last one?
Believe it or not, it took less than a a few hours from the moment Jack Hughes scored that overtime winner for a good chunk of the American public to start hating on Team USA. Of course, Jack said the first thing he thought about after he scored was USA Women’s hero, Megan Keller, who also scored an OT golden goal, but the second Kash Patel handed a phone over to the team with Donald Trump on the line, the Trump Derangement Syndrome took over and the USA men somehow became an enemy of the progressive left.
Some like Don Lemon even chastised them for taking the call, and others were mad that they laughed at a joke the president made about being impeached if he didn’t mention the women’s team. It wasn’t a slight at them, it was a shot at the hyper woke hysteria plaguing our country right now… which was completely validated by the unhinged response they had to the joke.
Trump said:
“We’re gonna have some medals for you guys, and we have to bring the… I must tell you, we’re going to have to bring the women’s team, you do know that?”
To which, the guys said, “Absolutely.” And then Trump said that if they didn’t:
“I do believe that I’d probably be impeached.”
Pretty harmless, eh? Someone also joked that they should “close the northern border,” which is objectively hilarious and an obvious joke since some of those guys play for Canadian NHL teams, but of course that set people off too.
So when TODAY asked Ellen Hughes, who is a former women’s team player and a current consultant for the women’s team, as well as the mom of Jack and Quinn Hughes, about her reaction to the video, she shut down any notion of controversy surrounding the players:
“At the end of the day, it’s just about the country. And the moment that these players, both the men and women, can bring so much unity to a group and to a country. People that cheered on that don’t watch hockey, people that have politics on one side or on the other side, and that’s all both the men’s team and the women’s team care about.
If you could see what we see from the inside, and the men and women sharing, you know, dorm rooms and halls and flex floors and the camaraderie and the synergy and the way the women cheered on the men and the way the men cheered on the women — that’s what it’s all about. And the other things they cannot control. They care about humanity. They care about unity and they care about the country.”
She added:
“It couldn’t have gone better. Both teams going undefeated. We couldn’t have written a better story, and I hope everybody just understands what we did in the moment, both the men and the women to bring this country together, and let everybody cheer in the same direction.”
Well said mom.
Here’s her full convo with the TODAY crew:
