Chris Cuomo fired back at Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt after a social media callout over the U.S. hockey team’s visit to Washington, D.C.
On Thursday’s episode of “Cuomo Mornings,” the host brought up his online scuffle with Leavitt after he expressed regret that the U.S. Olympic Men’s hockey team – which brought home its first gold medal in over four decades – was politicized after being invited and attending Trump’s State of the Union.
“This is such a dumb take,” Leavitt wrote in response to Cuomo on Wednesday. “This team just brought home Gold Medals for the first time in 46 years, and they were honored by the duly-elected President of the United States in front of the entire U.S. Congress. Only people with a loser-mentality would think this way.”
Cuomo responded to her tweet in the moment, but also broke it down in greater detail on his show Thursday.
“What is she talking about? She’s talking about me, and she has gotten over a million impressions on this tweet,” Cuomo said. “Now, what was I saying about the hockey team? Obviously, she has no fricking idea because what she does is shoot first, aim never. Why? Because this is what she is told to do. The negativity is a proxy for insight. Her problem, which I’m sure she’s not concerned about, is that she is absolutely wrong and being played as a fool.”
He added: “So I don’t take tough words from people who probably can’t do anything to hurt me seriously, because I don’t respect their opinion. Same thing with this press puppet, but what is it? It’s proof of what motivates our state of play. And you have to see that game because once you see the game and realize, well, so she’s not even right, so she wasn’t even going after the right thing the right way. Yeah, of course not. It’s not her job. Her job is just to attack. It’s like having a poorly trained pit bull.”
Over the weekend, the U.S. men’s hockey team pulled off an overtime win against Canada to nab the gold at the 2026 Winter Olympics. The team went viral when video of FBI Director Kash Patel was shared online, showing him celebrating in the locker room with the team as he called Trump, who congratulated the group directly.
As part of that congratulations, the president said he’d begrudgingly “have to bring the women’s team” to the White House, adding that he “probably would be impeached” if he didn’t invite them. The men’s team laughed, despite the women’s U.S. hockey team also bringing home gold.
The team faced heated backlash to their reaction to the president’s comments and then for attending Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday night. All but five members of the hockey team made the trip to Washington, D.C.
