Boston Bruins defenseman Charlie McAvoy says he and different members of Group USA males’s hockey staff are “definitely sorry” for laughing at President Donald Trump’s sexist joke about their feminine counterparts.
McAvoy was among the many many gamers who could possibly be noticed chuckling in a video of Trump’s congratulatory call with the U.S. males’s staff, which on Sunday won gold on the Winter Olympics for the primary time in 46 years.
Throughout the name, the president joked that he was “going to should deliver the ladies’s staff,” which additionally gained gold, to his State of the Union handle together with the boys’s staff or danger being “impeached.”
Footage of the decision drew heavy criticism on-line after going viral on social media. Amid the controversy, the U.S. girls’s staff formally declined Trump’s invitation, citing “timing and beforehand scheduled tutorial {and professional} commitments.”
Talking to CBS News and different retailers Thursday, McAvoy mentioned he regrets his habits.
“[I’m] simply definitely sorry for the way we responded to it in that second,” he mentioned. “You realize issues that simply occurred actually fast there. And if you recognize the boys’s staff and if you recognize the relationships that we’ve, the period of time that we’ve spent with the ladies’s staff and the way we’ve supported them, it’s definitely not reflective of how we appear and feel at them and their accomplishments.”
McAvoy went on to reward the ladies’s staff for his or her “unbelievable” achievements on the Winter Olympics.
“We supported them the identical manner that they supported us,” he mentioned. “We share this collectively, I do know that, and I’m fairly assured they know the way I really feel about them.”
Echoing these sentiments was Jake Sanderson of the Ottawa Senators, who described his staff’s actions as “a mistake” but in addition famous that “issues acquired blown out of proportion.”
“Now we have nothing however the utmost respect for the ladies,” he mentioned, recalling the way it felt to look at them win. “If we have been to do it once more, I believe we wouldn’t try this, and we made a mistake.”
Whether or not McAvoy and Sanderson’s remarks can be sufficient to revive the goodwill their staff initially loved stays to be seen.
Throughout his State of the Union handle, Trump introduced that Group USA males’s goalie, Connor Hellebuyck, would receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom ― however didn’t supply the ladies’s goalie, Aerin Frankel, the identical honor.
