After President Trump snubbed the U.S. women's Olympic hockey team, some of its fans were quick to respond. Among them, Flavor Flav, the erstwhile member of the pioneering rap group Public Enemy and television personality known for the bejeweled clocks he wears as signature necklaces.
In a locker room call over the weekend, Trump invited the U.S. men's hockey team to the White House to celebrate their gold medal victory over Canada, and offered to transport them there on a military plane.
"I must tell you, we're going to have to bring the women's team. You do know that," he added, to laughter from the male athletes. To underscore his apparent disdain for the women's team, Trump joked that he would likely be impeached if he didn't.
The U.S. women's hockey team won a gold medal of their own at the Olympics, also trouncing Canada. Players declined the president's invitation to the State of the Union address, which came in the wake of his phone call to the men's team.
Flavor Flav was quick to offer an alternative. "If the USA Women's Hockey Team wants a real celebration and invite… I'll host them in Las Vegas," the rapper wrote on his official Instagram channel. "Do some nice dinners and shows and good times. I'm sure I can get a hotel and airline to help me out here and celebrate these women for real for real."
In recent years, Flav has fashioned himself as an enthusiastic proponent of the Olympics, acting as an official "hype man" for this year's bobsled and skeleton teams. He also sponsored the U.S. water polo teams at the Paris Olympics in 2024, in part after learning how little women athletes earn.
"I actually love this for Flavor Flav," says Frankie de la Cretaz, an independent journalist who writes the queer-oriented Out of Your League newsletter. "For him, this really started when he got behind the women's water polo team during the Summer Olympics. And to be clear, the U.S. is one of the only countries that does not federally fund their elite Olympic and national team athletes. Many of them are funding themselves through sponsorships.
De la Cretaz likened the effort to crowd funding, and added that women athletes tend to be far more under-resourced than men.
Flav's public stand in support of the female hockey players is quite a turn, De la Cretaz added, for a celebrity who once referred to twin female contestants on his VHS reality show Flavor of Love as "Thing One" and "Thing Two." Over the past few years, Flav has supported female athletes consistently, they said, and not just during the high-wattage events of the Olympics. "He never does it in a way that feels demeaning or performative. And I have nothing but respect, actually, for the way he's shown up for women athletes."
De la Cretaz said they saw more hypocrisy coming from a president who has worked to ban transgender athletes. "So much of the anti-trans sports push has been about quote unquote, protecting women's sports. And if you want to 'protect women's sports,' it actually would be about investing and giving them the equal opportunity that men have and respecting them as athletes."
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