President Donald Trump was widely ridiculed Sunday after targeting American Olympic skier Hunter Hess in a blistering attack, an attack labeled by some critics as “genuinely embarrassing.”
Hess, a 27-year-old Oregon native, was asked in Italy on Friday about what it meant to represent the United States in this year’s Winter Olympics, to which he said it was “a little hard,” and that he wasn’t the “biggest fan” of “everything that’s going on in the U.S.,” Reuters reported. Trump had apparently seen Hess’s remarks by Sunday, and attacked him as a “real loser” that was “hard to root for.”
The unprecedented instance of a U.S. president publicly attacking an American Olympic athlete was met with exhaustion from critics, such as X user “Gandalv,” a political commentator who’s amassed nearly 60,000 followers on the platform.
“From a European perspective, this is genuinely embarrassing. You would have to search far and wide to find a country that manages to look this ugly in its politics and public behavior, and a president who so perfectly mirrors it,” they wrote in a post on X.
“In most democracies, a leader would rise above it, defend the country’s values without acting personally wounded, and avoid turning a citizen into a national punching bag. This is not strength and the MAGA regime drags the entire country’s reputation down.”
The closest parallel in American history occurred during the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico, when two Black American athletes – Tommie Smith and John Carlos – raised their fists during a performance of the National Anthem in solidarity with the ongoing fight against racial inequality. And, while Smith and Carlos were ultimately expelled from the Olympic Games for their act of protest, they were not attacked by the sitting president, then Lyndon B. Johnson.
“Trump is a Disgrace: He just called US Olympic Skier, Hunter Hess ‘a real loser,’” wrote liberal political commentator Brian Krassenstein, who’s amassed nearly 1 million followers on X.
“Imagine if Joe Biden called a US Olympian ‘a real loser.’ Imagine the meltdowns that MAGA would be having right now, calling him a traitor. The President of the US is a pathetic clown.”
Trump is a Disgrace: He just called US Olympic Skier, Hunter Hess “a real loser”. Imagine if Joe Biden called a US Olympian “a real loser”. Imagine the meltdowns that MAGA would be having right now, calling him a traitor. The President of the US is a pathetic clown. pic.twitter.com/Hr1y2GOXkY — Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) February 8, 2026
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