Members of the U.S. males’s hockey crew are anticipated to attend President Donald Trump’s State of the Union tackle on Tuesday, White Home officers mentioned.
The gamers visited the White Home on Tuesday afternoon, the place they posed for a photograph with their medals and took a tour of the White Home, in accordance with a photograph and video posted by White Home communications adviser Margo Martin.
Twenty members of the crew have been at White Home (all gamers however Brock Nelson, Jackson LaCombe, Jake Oettinger, Jake Guentzel and Kyle Connor.)
The administration had been working via logistics so the gamers may attend the speech, a White Home official mentioned.
Most gamers on the crew are making the journey, although some have declined to attend. Nationwide Hockey League video games resume on Wednesday.
Trump invited the gamers on Sunday after the crew received the Olympic gold medal in an time beyond regulation victory in opposition to Canada. On the time, on a cellphone name with the gamers, the president joked that he can be impeached if he didn’t additionally invite the ladies’s crew. The U.S. ladies’s hockey crew, which additionally received gold, declined the invitation on Monday, citing scheduling conflicts.
High Republican lawmakers mentioned the lads’s hockey crew can be honored throughout the president’s speech Tuesday night.
Home Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., mentioned lawmakers would discover a approach “squeeze in” the crew. He defined that Trump referred to as him Sunday night time to say that he wished the hockey crew to attend the speech — a request that offered logistical hurdles as a result of, as Johnson instructed the president, the gallery, the place company sit, was already full.
“We’re going to work out logistics, and someway, a way, we’ll squeeze within the hockey gamers tonight, and it’ll be a terrific second for America,” Johnson instructed reporters on Tuesday. “And it truly is a logo to all of us that all of us play for America’s crew.”
Home Majority Chief Steve Scalise, R-La., additionally instructed reporters that “we’re going to see them, and we’re going to have a good time them tonight as President Trump talks in regards to the 250th birthday of America.”
The Home chamber, the place the speech takes place, is often filled with lawmakers, high officers and company. The president, first woman and members of Congress deliver company who spotlight their political and coverage priorities. Trump additionally invited Erika Kirk, the widow of Turning Level USA co-founder Charlie Kirk, and the mother and father of Sarah Beckstrom, the 20-year-old Nationwide Guard member who was shot and killed in Washington, D.C., final yea.
Ellen Hughes, who’s the mom of males’s crew gamers Jack and Quinn Hughes and in addition a participant growth guide for the U.S. ladies’s hockey crew, was requested about Trump’s impeachment feedback in an interview with NBC’s “Right now.”
“I feel on the finish of the day, it is simply in regards to the nation, and the second that these gamers, each the women and men, can deliver a lot unity to a bunch and to a rustic,” she mentioned.
