The Left Is Big Mad at Kash Patel for Celebrating the Gold Medal Win With USA Hockey

One of the most disingenuous things in all of politics and the news media is to watch the left pretend to care about government spending. 

I’m old enough to remember 2017, right after President Donald Trump was inaugurated the first time. Trump wanted to build a wall along the country's southern border. Democrats resisted the plan, of course, and their excuse was the estimated cost, which at the time was $21 billion. 

For perspective, consider that Zohran Mamdani’s annual operating budget just for his city this year is over $115 billion. No Democrats are raising an eyebrow over that. 

Or, consider that in 2023, the Biden administration submitted a request to Congress for an “emergency supplemental funding package” to cover immigration and border spending, along with Ukraine and Israel aid that topped $106 billion. But $21 billion for a wall that voters wanted was just wasteful spending, according to the left. 

You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t believe them this week as they gin up the machine to try to create controversy over FBI Director Kash Patel's trip to Italy. The FBI had said he was in the country for official business, and as we all know now, he made time for a historic USA Hockey game as well. Patel was on hand for the men's Team USA hockey win over Canada to take the gold medal at the Winter Olympic games. 

That leftist astroturf goes like this: 

TONITE Our story. FBI told us @FBIDirectorKash was only going to Olympics for meetings - not for the hockey games. But he attended the games and ended up chugging beer 🍺 w players. Taxpayers paid a lot for this fan boy's dream w @KDilanianMSNOW https://t.co/LWja2gG4XN

— Carol Leonnig (@CarolLeonnig) February 23, 2026

And this: 

Who paid for @FBIDirectorKash to attend the Olympics and celebrate gold with the men’s team? pic.twitter.com/uGmhZG3hoN

— Morgan J. Freeman (@mjfree) February 23, 2026

And this: 

You paid for this trip. https://t.co/9BO7lv9an9 pic.twitter.com/NfjUDn7Duh

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) February 23, 2026

Based on all of these astroturfed X posts, and there are hundreds from other leftists just like them, you’d think Patel just ran up the federal deficit, but the estimated cost for the trip is $75,000. 

Since the Democrats can’t be honest about what they’re really big mad about, we will. The left can’t stand it when America wins. I mean really wins the way the American men’s hockey team won on Sunday, and the way the American women’s hockey team won earlier in the week. The left hates to see flag-draped American athletes with gold medals around their necks, proud to be American. The left doesn’t like it when Americans are unapologetically happy to be American. They don’t like it when this sort of happiness makes being a patriotic American attractive to others.

And they really hate it when it happens under the Trump administration’s watch. People simply are not allowed to feel good about America when Trump is president. So, if that means rooting for Canada to beat the USA on the ice, so be it. 

Don’t believe me? Monica Torres of the HuffPost interviewed a number of psychologists who wanted fellow leftists to know that “if waving the American flag or chanting ‘USA!’ turns you off right now, you're not alone.” 

Meet HuffPost’s Monica Torres, who wrote an article stating, “If waving the American flag or chanting ‘USA!’ turns you off right now, you’re not alone.” pic.twitter.com/N0nKt86B4N

— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) February 22, 2026

Torres wrote: “‘The degree to which you feel shame and guilt right now for cheering U.S. Olympians might also depend on how much cognitive dissonance you have between the stated values of being American –– freedom, revolutionary spirit, opportunity for all –– versus how our government has actually acted in the hundreds of years since the U.S. was formed,’ said Lauren Appio, a psychologist and executive coach.” 

The bottom line is pretty simple. No one’s allowed to have fun while the left is miserable, and it will stay miserable until Trump leaves office. Then, they hope, they will win the White House so they can be happy, once again making more than 80 million Americans miserable. 

Nothing gets under a leftist’s skin like seeing conservatives as happy warriors, doing their jobs, doing them well, and having fun doing them. 

Kash Patel’s greatest offense this past weekend was to cheer for the USA, to have fun doing it, and to create optics where it looks like our newest gold-medal hockey team actually likes him. To borrow from the great game of hockey, I’d call that a hat trick.

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