President Donald Trump is excited about Olympic hockey. Not Kash-Patel-getting-drunk-after-using-taxpayer-jet-to-see-game level of excitement, but pretty close. Well, about the men’s team, that is.
“Our country is winning again. In fact, we’re winning so much that we really don’t know what to do about it. People are asking me, please, please, please, Mr. President, we’re winning too much. We can’t take it anymore. We’re not used to winning in our country until you came along, we’re just always losing. But now we’re winning too much,” he claimed during his State of the Union address on Tuesday night (Feb. 24). “And to prove that point, to prove that point, here with us tonight is a group of winners who just made the entire nation proud. The men’s gold medal Olympic hockey team.”
Trump, who had called the team after their win and mocked the women’s team that also won the gold medal, added during his speech to a joint session of Congress that he would give the goalie for the men’s team the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Since it was the first Olympic gold for the men’s team since the 1980 “miracle on ice” game against the Soviet Union, many people have tossed around the word “miracle.” Although it’ll be much harder for Disney to make some movie where we all get excited to beat the evil empire of … checks notes … Canada?
Members of the men’s U.S. Olympic hockey team stand while being applauded during the State of the Union address in the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 24, 2026. (Matt Rourke/Associated Press)
While Trump tried to make the men’s hockey team winning Olympic gold proof of his greatness as a president — which would also mean he must think Jimmy Carter was the last great president since he was in the Oval Office during the 1980 game — Trump didn’t go as far as to call it a “miracle.” But he did use the m-word later in a way that offered insights into his prosperity gospel-infused Christian Nationalism.
“When God needs a nation to work his miracles, he knows exactly who to ask,” Trump claimed.
God needs help doing miracles? And a nation is performing them? And that nation is apparently the United States under Trump’s leadership? Big if true. But since it’s not, this issue of A Public Witness explores the notion of viewing a nation like some sort of magical shaman.
A ‘Glorious’ Nation
Speaking for 1 hour and 47 minutes, Trump beat his own record — set last year — for the longest U.S. presidential address to Congress. No other president has even droned on for as long as an hour and a half, though Bill Clinton came up just over a minute shy of that mark in 2000. Saying that much, of course, means Trump made lots of false claims Tuesday night.
Even as he spoke for a record length, Trump didn’t actually make many religious comments. Some conservative Christians complained he didn’t mention abortion at all. When he did talk about faith, it was almost all in a moment when he honored the late MAGA political activist Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated last year.
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