The Threshold
The right used to attack athletes who protested. Now they attack athletes who express feelings at all.
On Sunday, Amber Glenn won an Olympic gold medal in the team figure skating event. She wore an LGBTQ+ pin on her team jacket at the medal ceremony. That same day, she announced she was stepping back from social media after receiving what she described as “a scary amount of hate/threats.”
Her offense: she’d told reporters a few days earlier that the queer community is going through “a hard time” under the current administration. “I hope that I can use my platform and my voice throughout these Games to try to encourage people to stay strong,” she said.
Megyn Kelly had already quote-tweeted a clip of Glenn’s comments and written: “Another turncoat to root against.” Glenn hadn’t even skated yet.
“I was disappointed because I’ve never had so many people wish me harm before, just for being me and speaking about being decent,” Glenn said Sunday night.
Also on Friday, at a Team USA freeski press conference, a reporter asked the athletes how it feels to represent the country given what’s happening back home. Hunter Hess, a 27-year-old freestyle skier from Bend, Oregon, said this: “It brings up mixed emotions to represent the U.S. right now, I think. It’s a little hard. There’s obviously a lot going on that I’m not the biggest fan of and I think a lot of people aren’t.” He said he sees himself as representing his friends and family, the athletes who came before him, and the things he believes are good about the country. “Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.”
By Sunday morning, the president of the United States had posted about him on Truth Social. “U.S. Olympic Skier, Hunter Hess, a real Loser, says he doesn’t represent his Country in the current Winter Olympics,” Trump wrote. “If that’s the case, he shouldn’t have tried out for the Team, and it’s too bad he’s on it. Very hard to root for someone like this. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Two things about that post. First: Hess didn’t say he doesn’t represent his country. He said wearing the flag doesn’t mean he represents everything that’s going on in the country. Those are different sentences. (PolitiFact flagged the distortion.) Second: a 27-year-old skier expressed conflicted feelings to a small group of reporters in Milan, and the president decided this required a public response.
Rep. Tim Burchett posted on X: “Shut up and go play in the snow.” Rep. Byron Donalds: “YOU chose to wear our flag. YOU chose to represent our country. If that’s too hard for you, then GO HOME.” White House chief of protocol Monica Crowley reposted Trump and added: “Represent America with pride or GTFO.”
At the same press conference, Hess’s teammate Chris Lillis had said he felt “heartbroken about what’s happened in the United States” and hoped people watching the Olympics would see “the America that we’re trying to represent.”
On Saturday, Mikaela Shiffrin sat down at a press conference having clearly anticipated every version of this question. She’d copied down a Nelson Mandela quote that Charlize Theron had used during the Opening Ceremony. She read from notes she’d typed into her phone. She said representing Team USA is an honor and a privilege. She talked about values of inclusivity and kindness and tenacity. She was careful. She was prepared. And she still ended up in the “athletes get political at the Olympics” coverage cycle.
Look at what these athletes actually said. “Hard time.” “Mixed emotions.” “Heartbroken.” Shiffrin literally brought notes so she wouldn’t accidentally say the wrong thing. And the response, in every case, was the same: a president calling them losers, members of Congress telling them to go home, conservative media figures calling them enemies, and ordinary people sending death threats to a woman on the day she won gold for her country.
What these athletes are saying is all pretty tame
In December 2017, Lindsey Vonn told CNN she would “absolutely not” visit the Trump White House and said she hoped “to represent the people of the United States, not the president.” She said she didn’t think many people in the current government represent the country well. That was her whole statement.
People told her they hoped she’d break her neck. When she hurt her back in a World Cup race a few days later, Fox News ran a story tying the injury to her Trump comments, as if it were divine retribution. “There’s, of course, going to be people that hate me and hope I ski off a cliff and die,” Vonn said at the Olympics a few months later. She was trying to laugh it off. She shouldn’t have had to.
In June 2019, Megan Rapinoe sat for an interview mid-World Cup and said, with a scoff, “I’m not going to the fucking White House.” Trump responded: “Megan should WIN first before she TALKS! Finish the job!” and “Megan should never disrespect our Country, the White House, or our Flag.” Former White House aide Sebastian Gorka said on his radio show that the team “wants to destroy everything that is wholesome in our country and in our Judeo-Christian civilization.”
The president attacking a mid-tournament athlete was absurd. Gorka claiming the women’s soccer team threatened Western civilization was unhinged. But Rapinoe was doing something deliberately provocative and she knew it. She scored two goals against France after Trump’s tweets and won the tournament. It was confrontational by design. And she came out on top.
In 2021, hammer thrower Gwen Berry turned away from the American flag on the podium at the Olympic trials while the anthem played, then draped a shirt reading “Activist Athlete” over her head. Dan Crenshaw went on Fox & Friends and said she should be removed from the team. Ted Cruz tweeted: “Why does the Left hate America?” Lara Trump said she hoped Berry wouldn’t make it to the podium at the actual Olympics. Calling for a woman’s removal from her own Olympic team because she turned away from a flag was extreme. But Berry had done a specific, public, intentional thing. There was an act to point to.
And then there was Simone Biles. That same summer, Biles withdrew from the team gymnastics final at Tokyo after experiencing the “twisties,” a condition where a gymnast loses spatial awareness mid-air. She wasn’t protesting anything. She was protecting her body. Charlie Kirk called her a “selfish sociopath” and “a shame to the country.” The next day he reposted the clip: “Just so we’re clear, I stand by every word of this.” There was no political statement. There was no protest. A sexual abuse survivor made a medical decision and got the same treatment Rapinoe got for telling the president to go fuck himself.
All of these reactions were disproportionate and wrong. But until Biles, every one of them was at least responding to something. An athlete refused a White House invite. Told the president to fuck off. Turned her back on the flag. There was a choice, an act, a thing the outrage machine could point to and say: that’s the problem.
The chill
By 2023, the right had stopped pretending the issue was protest. When the U.S. women’s soccer team lost to Sweden in the World Cup, Trump fired up his years-long grudge against Rapinoe and posted on Truth Social: “WOKE EQUALS FAILURE. Nice shot Megan, the USA is going to Hell!!!” Megyn Kelly said on her podcast: “I’m thrilled they lost. You don’t support America, I don’t support you.” These weren’t reactions to an act of protest. They were celebrations of an American loss. Losing was enough, as long as the team had the wrong politics.
Three years later, even that pretext is gone.
In 2017, Vonn told CNN she would “absolutely not” visit the Trump White House. People told her they hoped she’d break her neck.
In January 2026, Fox News Digital asked Vonn the same question ahead of these Olympics. “I’m not going to answer that question because, I’m just not going to answer it,” she said. “I want to keep my passport.”
Same person. Same question. Eight years apart. Ahead of the 2028 Olympics, she answered freely on CNN. In 2026, Fox News Digital asked, and she joked about keeping her passport. Chilling!
The pile-on, meanwhile, kept growing. Sen. Rick Scott declared on X that anyone “who feels otherwise should be stripped of their USA Olympic uniform.” YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul, photographed with Vice President J.D. Vance at a U.S. women’s hockey game, posted: “From all true Americans If you don’t want to represent this country go live somewhere else.” The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee issued a statement saying it was aware of “an uptick in abusive and harmful messages directed at the athletes” and was reporting credible threats to law enforcement.
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A 27-year-old skier said he had “mixed emotions” to a small group of reporters. Almost instantly, the president of the United States, a U.S. senator, two members of Congress, the White House chief of protocol, a former NFL quarterback, a YouTuber, and an actor had all publicly attacked him or athletes like him. A senator proposed stripping athletes of their uniforms. The USOPC had to issue a statement about threats. And the most accomplished American skier of all time, asked the exact question she answered freely nine years ago, declined to answer and joked about keeping her passport.
That’s what the collapsed threshold produces. Not just attacks on the people who spoke, but silence from the people who saw what happened to them.
The frame
Here are the headlines from the past few days. CBS News: “Trump lashes out at Team USA athlete for sharing thoughts on politics.” ABC News: “Trump criticizes ‘loser’ Team USA skier Hunter Hess over press conference comments.” Mediaite: “Trump Trashes Olympic Skier Who Says He Has ‘Mixed Emotions’ Representing US.” CNN: “Trump calls Olympic skier ‘real loser’ after athlete expresses ‘mixed emotions’ representing the US.”
That’s the “athletes speak out, conservatives push back” frame. It treats a skier answering a reporter’s question the same way it treated Rapinoe telling the president to go fuck himself. The coverage also launders Trump’s mischaracterization of what Hess actually said. Most outlets ran Trump’s version in the headline and Hess’s actual words somewhere around paragraph four. A reader scanning the coverage comes away thinking Hess said something far more inflammatory than he did.
Then there’s Glenn. Multiple outlets ran variations of “US figure skater Amber Glenn faces backlash over politics and copyright issues after Olympic gold.” A woman said her community is having a hard time, won a gold medal for her country, and received death threats. The headline called it “backlash.”
“Shut up and play” was always the demand. But it used to mean: don’t protest, don’t kneel, don’t turn your back on the flag. Now it means: don’t answer the question. Don’t have feelings. Don’t be anything other than grateful. Shut up and salute.
Shiffrin brought prepared notes. Glenn left social media on the day she won gold. Vonn joked about keeping her passport. The chill is real.
If any athlete wants to stick the knife in and twist it, they should say: To be absolutely clear, what troubles me about the federal government right now is that the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, at the direction and under the control of President Trump, are obviously protecting pedophiles and associates of convicted felons and sex offenders Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell from accountability. Standing against pedophilia, in solidarity with, and desiring justice for victims cannot possibly be considered politically controversial, can it?
In addition to the vitriol (and threats of violence) unleashed against athletes who dare express an opinion, there's the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing politicians and maga influencers who are just as quick to laud those athletes who express a "correct" opinion. The most recent example being an NFL player (whose name escapes me at the moment) who became a maga-media darling because his political opinions were aligned with theirs. He was quickly transformed into the anti-Kelce during the dust-up over Taylor Swift.