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Stop Asking Olympians How They Feel About America
USA’s Brandon Kim and Corinne Stoddard compete in the short track speed skating mixed team relay during the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games. (Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images)
The Winter Olympics is just a reminder that we live in a free country where you can criticize the president, and he can criticize you, and then you can get on with your life.
By Kat Rosenfield
02.10.26 — Culture and Ideas
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The most salacious Winter Olympics drama of the week was, for me, an emotional roller coaster. A high-speed journey from dismay to horror to nauseated recognition, culminating in a sense of having fallen out of space and time as déjà vu collided with clairvoyance. The thing that was happening had happened before; it would happen again, and again.

I am referring, of course, to the incident wherein American Olympic skier Hunter Hess said he had “mixed emotions” about certain U.S. domestic policies, and President Donald Trump called Hess a “real loser” who “shouldn’t have tried out for the team, and it’s too bad he’s on it.”

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Kat Rosenfield
Culture writer, novelist, and podcaster. On Twitter at @katrosenfield.
Tags:
Free Speech
Olympics
Sports
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