AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

This announcement: I am so sorry to say that that huge celebration we were going to have with over 2,000 people, we were supposed to have tonight, February 23rd, at the historic Riverside Church, has been canceled because of the blizzard we are in right now in New York City, what’s being called a bomb cyclone. We are going to let people know through email and on our website at democracynow.org and on all social media when we plan to have this 30th anniversary celebration. We hope it will be in the next few weeks, and we’ll keep everyone up to date. But in the meantime, we want to ensure that everyone remains safe.

The Winter Olympics wrapped up on Sunday in Italy. At the Games, Norway set a new record by winning 41 medals, including 18 gold. On Sunday, the U.S. men’s hockey team beat Canada. The men’s team had an unexpected visitor in their locker room after the game: FBI Director Kash Patel. A reporter from ProPublica posted video from inside the locker room showing Patel chugging a beer and partying with the team. Patel, who’s an avid hockey fan, had flown to Italy on a government plane, sparking widespread criticism. The FBI had claimed the purpose of Patel’s trip was for official business. During the Olympics, there were multiple protests over the Trump administration’s decision to send U.S. ICE agents to provide security for the U.S. delegation.

We go now to Jules Boykoff, the author of six books on the Olympics, including Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics. His new piece for The Globe and Mail is titled “At the Olympics, politics has always come before sports.” Boykoff played for the U.S. under-23 men’s national soccer team between 1989 and '91. His forthcoming memoir is titled Kicking. And he's speaking to us from Toronto.

Jules, we talked to you at the beginning of the Olympics. There’s so much to talk about. You say it’s all about politics, even as President Trump said and JD Vance said people should just play and not engage in politics. What struck you about these Olympics that took place in Italy?

JULES BOYKOFF: Well, first off, Amy, the Trump administration has full-on politicized these Olympics from the very beginning, when JD Vance showed up at the opening ceremony and was roundly booed and jeered by the audience, to him using the opportunity to be in Milan as essentially a campaign trip for 2028 election, to what you were just talking about — the remarkable moment of Kash Patel flying to Milan on the taxpayer dime to watch a bunch of hockey games and then whoop it up with the United States hockey team in the locker room afterwards, chugging beers, slamming his hand on the table.

But there’s also President Donald Trump who’s politicized the games. After all, he punched down on Olympian Hunter Hess, who just was explaining, in a pretty nuanced way, how he felt like it was — he had mixed feelings about participating in these Olympics at this particular moment. Trump called him “a real loser,” unleashing a torrent of hate at Mr. Hess, who said this was the most difficult period of his life.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, I wanted to play Hunter —

JULES BOYKOFF: So the Trump administration has showed everybody —

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play Hunter in his own words, the 27-year-old U.S.A. freestyle skier, speaking at a news conference at the Olympics.

HUNTER HESS: I think it brings up mixed emotions to represent the U.S. right now, I think. It’s a little hard. There’s obviously a lot going on that I’m not the biggest fan of, and I think a lot of people aren’t. I think, for me, it’s more I’m representing my, like, friends and family back home, the people that represented it before me, all the things that I believe are good about the U.S. I just think if it aligns with my moral values, I feel like I’m representing it. Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S. So, yeah, I just kind of want to do it for my friends and my family and the people that supported me getting here.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Hunter Hess. Jules Boykoff, continue.

JULES BOYKOFF: Well, that’s significant for a number of reasons. One, when President Trump took to Truth Social to slam Hunter Hess as “a real loser,” he also mangled that very nuanced message that you just played for us. In the process, he unleashed a torrent of hate. The MAGA army has come after Hunter Hess really hard. Second, I don’t know how any of this fits with the Olympic spirit. I mean, I think President — it’s not too much to say that President Trump wouldn’t recognize the Olympic spirit if it came up and kissed him on the cankle. And third, the International Olympic Committee has been utterly silent when it comes to defending Mr. Hess. They just sat around and let him float in the wind.

Fortunately, numerous Olympians from around the world spoke up in defense of Mr. Hess. You’ve got Eileen Gu, the great freestyle skier who represents China, who said that he absolutely has the right to speak out. So did Chloe Kim, the superstar snowboarder from the United States who said the same thing. You’ve got a cross-country skier who even went as far as to say what Trump said was childish.

And it’s not just athletes who are defending Hess. Some of them have actually gone on the attack. You’ve got Kelly Pannek, who is a gold medal winner with the U.S. women’s hockey team, who explained how she was proud to be from Minnesota, where people were taking to the streets to fight back against ICE, and that she drew inspiration from them. You’ve got another curler from Minnesota, a guy named Rich Ruohonen, who said — he’s also a lawyer, and he said what’s happening on the streets of Minnesota is disgusting and illegal and there’s no gray area about it. And so it’s been a really interesting moment to have these athletes speaking out, and it’s a tribute —

AMY GOODMAN: Jules, I wanted to go to the U.S. — 

JULES BOYKOFF: — to the social movements on the streets.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to the U.S. figure skater Amber Glenn, the first openly LGBTQ+ athlete to compete in women’s singles figure skating at the Winter Olympics.

AMBER GLENN: It’s been a hard time for the community overall under this administration. It isn’t the first time that we’ve had to come together as a community and try and fight for our human rights. And now especially, it’s not just affecting the queer community, but many other communities. And I think that we are able to support each other in a way that we didn’t have to before, and because of that, it’s made us a lot stronger.

AMY GOODMAN: U.S. figure skater Amber Glenn. Jules?

JULES BOYKOFF: God bless Amber Glenn. I mean, the courage that she has shown in the public sphere in the face of all this vitriol has been remarkable. And thank goodness for the U.S. figure skating team, that brought so much joy to these Olympic Games, a joy that contrasts mightily with the hate that’s spewing from MAGAland right now.

AMY GOODMAN: I also wanted to ask you about the Haitian athletes. Describe what happened to them and their uniforms.

JULES BOYKOFF: Absolutely. So, there were some athletes from Haiti that were participating in these Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina. And the designer of their uniforms put a nod to history on those uniforms, and it was the form of a figure of Toussaint Louverture, the revolutionary leader who got rid of slavery in Haiti and also started the first Black republic in 1804. And the International Olympic Committee looked at that uniform, and they said, “Oh, that’s a breach of our rules around being political,” and they forced the Haitian squad to scrub Toussaint Louverture off of their uniforms.

And this points to the sort of selective morality that the International Olympic Committee has shown at these Olympics, whether it’s doing that to Haitian athletes or forcing the bold Ukrainian skeleton athlete Vladyslav Heraskevych to not participate because he wanted to wear a helmet of remembrance honoring those who died, his compatriots from Ukraine who died to Russia in the war.

AMY GOODMAN: And other people who were trying to bring up what was happening in their countries? I mean, you say the IOC, the International Olympic Committee, says it’s neutral, but that simply means they side with power and put athletes in the crosshairs.

JULES BOYKOFF: That’s absolutely correct. And, you know, Amy, I think it’s important to take a moment to look at Vladyslav Heraskevych, the skeleton Olympian from Ukraine, who basically sacrificed his ability to compete on the altar of his political beliefs. He showed up in Milan Cortina with a beautiful helmet of remembrance with the images of 24 athletes who had been killed by Russia in war. The International Olympic Committee allowed him to wear that helmet in his practice runs, but when it came time to the actual competition, they said, “No, you can’t wear that. That’s political.” And so, he decided, Heraskevych, that he wasn’t going to race. This is in sharp contrast with what the International Olympic Committee said to him in 2022, when after one of his runs he held up a placard that said “No war in Ukraine.” So, at that point, the IOC, in 2022, said, “Oh, that’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” But now, four years later, they drop the hammer on him.

And, you know, it’s been remarkable to see them hide behind this idea of neutrality, as you mentioned. Neutrality — when you’re talking about powerful people, neutrality tends to benefit the oppressors. Neutrality tends to benefit those who already have power. I’m confident that history will vindicate Mr. Heraskevych. He has shown the courage to remind us that sometimes the message is a lot more important than the medal.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, pressure is mounting publicly and privately for the entertainment mogul Casey Wasserman to step down as chair of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics following the series of salacious emails with Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell included in the Epstein files that were released by the Justice Department. Can you tell us what’s happening there?

JULES BOYKOFF: When Los Angeles was first handed the Olympics by the International Olympic Committee back in 2017, they were viewed as a safe pair of hands. But that safe pair of hands has absolutely fumbled the torch time and again. The incident that you’re talking about is disgusting. It’s an immoral obscenity, and it’s led to the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, to call for his resignation, alongside around a third of the Los Angeles City Council.

But that’s not the first moral obscenity that Casey Wasserman has carried out in his official duties as running the L.A. Olympics. After all, as ICE ravaged Los Angeles and the military was called in to Los Angeles, the LA28 Organizing Committee sat totally silent. Not a peep from them. Other sports administration groups around the city were speaking out, making statements. Not LA28. They sat totally quiet.

There’s also the fact that Casey Wasserman, back in August, when he attended a meeting with President Trump announcing the creation of a White House task force on the Olympics, was the first person to clap for President Trump when he went on a random anti-trans rant, perfectly willing to throw the trans community under the bus to maintain power and to keep Trump on his good side. Those are the moral obscenities that I’m very concerned about, and I hope that people think about as you consider moving toward these Olympic Games.

AMY GOODMAN: Jules Boykoff, I want to thank you for being with us, author of six books on the Olympics, including Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics. We’ll link to your latest article, “At the Olympics, politics has always come before sports.”

That does it for our show. Our Democracy Now! 30th anniversary celebration may be off tonight — it’s not happening — at Riverside Church, but it will happen in the next weeks. We’ll keep you posted at democracynow.org.