MILAN — This week, the United States withheld funding from the World Anti-Doping Agency, and the timing was ironic. All the old pathetic drug-cheat excuses now apply to the U.S. too.
Our president insults and threatens countries that never posed any threat to us. There must have been some misunderstanding. We allow our government to kill innocent people and treat children inhumanely. This is not a reflection of our character. Journalists report on astoundingly brazen, breathtakingly massive corruption. We will not let this define us. Italians hear that ICE agents will be here and immediately start protesting. Please—let’s not rush to judgment.
U.S. Olympians are breathtaking athletes and generally lovely people. They do not deserve to be game pieces for sportswashing, but they are anyway. Meanwhile, United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) leaders do what too many U.S. elected officials do: They minimize and neutralize and act like President Donald Trump is a totally normal and reasonable guy, because saying anything else will cost them.
USOPC CEO Sarah Hirshland and fellow execs Gene Sykes and Nicole Deal made it clear during their press conference here Thursday that they would like everybody here to separate fact from fiction.
Sure: Let’s play that game.
The U.S. recently invaded Venezuela, ostensibly to arrest president Nicolás Maduro for drug trafficking (among other charges), and immediately started selling the country’s oil reserves. Those are facts. Trump then declared the U.S. would “run” Venezuela for a while, as part of a larger effort to control the Western Hemisphere; he has also openly and repeatedly expressed a desire to invade and annex Greenland (and even Canada) for strategic purposes. Those are facts.
Now how do you think Greenland’s own Ukaleq and Sondre Slettemark must feel? The Slettemarks are siblings who will represent Denmark at the Milan Cortina Olympics. They are also biathletes, which means they move fast and shoot guns, skills that might come in handy if Trump ever fulfills his Greenland-invasion fantasy.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance watched the U.S. women’s hockey team defeat Czechia on Thursday in Milan. | James Lang-Imagn Images
Remember: For the second straight Olympics, Russian and Belarusian athletes are not competing under their national flags because their governments unlawfully invaded Ukraine. Russia was originally banned for its government-sponsored doping program, but the Ukraine invasion is what led to the current bans—and the IOC actually had to defend letting Russian and Belarusian athletes compete at all.
“It’s not about Russia. It is about the athletes,” then-IOC president Thomas Bach told CNN last year. “Everybody who is following the rules has to have the right to participate in the Olympic Games, full stop.”
The U.S. has no more right to invade Greenland than Russia had to invade Ukraine. We haven’t actually invaded, obviously. But the threat alone is terrifying enough, and saying “settle down—we probably won’t actually invade” is gaslighting and does little to calm the Slettemarks and the people of Greenland. We did not intend to hurt anybody.
When Italians got wind that ICE agents might be here and started protesting, the USOPC acted like this was hysteria based on misinformation.
“Unequivocally: There are no ICE agents that are part of the USOPC team delegation on the ground here in Milan,” said Deal, the USOPC’s Chief of Security and Athlete Services. “I am not aware that there are ICE agents here.”
That might all be true. But this year, ICE agents have killed dissenting citizens. Fact. The official justifications for those killings have clearly ventured into fiction. ICE agents, whose official mission is “securing our nation’s borders and safeguarding the integrity of our immigration system,” have detained children as young as three years old. Fact.
The strongest evidence that ICE agents are not here is that Italians protested and nobody shot them. As other outlets have reported, ICE often provides security support at major sporting events, but it does not use agents from the detaining-three-year-olds branch of the operation. It is also possible ICE is here to congratulate Italy for how it treated Amanda Knox.
But when Italians heard that ICE agents will be at the Olympics, of course they protested. Why should they wait for reassurance from a U.S. government that lies so regularly? It is disingenuous for the USOPC to act like this is all happening because of one erroneous news story. What about all the other news stories that accurately reported horrifying events?
A branch of ICE is reported to be in Milan providing security support for the U.S. | Guglielmo Mangiapane-Reuters via Imagn Images
With the 2028 Olympics slated for Los Angeles, the USOPC wants to reassure people it will all be fine.
“The biggest thing people are asking about,” USOPC chair Sykes said, “is, ‘Can we come to the United States? Will the visa system be O.K.?’ ”
Hirshland said, “What we wanted all our international counterparts to understand is if they come to us, we can help them.”
That has been true so far. But the Trump administration has also, on multiple occasions, issued blanket travel bans for would-be visitors from certain countries. Fact. There are exceptions for visiting athletes. But what about athletes’ families or visiting fans? And no matter what administration officials tell Hirshland, there is no way she can say with 100% certainty that Trump will stick with it two years from now.
“We have an excellent relationship with the administration,” Sykes said,
USOPC CEO Sarah Hirshland (left) and board chair Gene Sykes tried to allay concerns over the U.S. in a press conference Thursday. | Mike Lawrie/Getty Images
That might be true. It is also what the administration wants to hear. But anybody who implies they have a firm handle on what Trump will do two years from now is insulting your intelligence.
USOPC leaders are stuck. They have to work with whoever the president is. They have no other choice. But when a nation’s credibility crumbles, it crumbles everywhere, even at the Olympics.
The Slettemarks should not have to wonder if the U.S. will really invade Greenland. Italians should not have to worry that ICE agents will harass innocent people at the Olympics. American athletes should be able to wave their flag proudly without worrying about who is hiding behind it.
But they did not create this environment.
We did.
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