President Trump reportedly dressed down FBI Director Kash Patel behind closed doors after a video surfaced of Patel chugging a beer and pounding a table inside the U.S. men's hockey team's locker room following their gold medal victory at the Winter Olympics in Milan.
The Daily Mail reported that Trump told Patel he was unhappy with the locker-room celebration and raised concerns about Patel's use of a government aircraft for the trip to Italy, which could cost taxpayers up to $75,000, according to NBC News.
The president, who does not drink alcohol, took issue with both the optics of the celebration and the travel arrangements, per a person familiar with the matter.
The FBI declined to comment on whether Trump expressed frustration with Patel.
Team USA won its first Olympic men's hockey gold since 1980. That's a legitimate historic moment. Patel was filmed enthusiastically drinking from a beer and shouting inside the locker room with the newly crowned champions. ProPublica first posted the video, which circulated widely.
Patel defended himself on X:
"For the very concerned media - yes, I love America and was extremely humbled when my friends, the newly minted Gold Medal winners on Team USA, invited me into the locker room to celebrate this historic moment with the boys- Greatest country on earth and greatest sport on earth."
The FBI maintained the trip was official in nature, stating simply that "it is not a personal trip." Patel said he met with Italian law enforcement officials and U.S. agencies involved in security during the visit.
Earlier, he had posted pictures from inside the Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena during Sunday's final.
There's nothing wrong with celebrating American greatness. There's nothing wrong with an FBI director being proud of Team USA. But government aircraft cost money, and the director of the FBI is not a sports ambassador. Trump understood that distinction immediately.
This is the kind of thing that hands your opponents ammunition for free. And sure enough, Senator Dick Durbin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, wasted no time asking the Justice Department's inspector general to "investigate Director Patel's misuse or mismanagement of government resources."
Predictable as sunrise. But predictable doesn't mean unearned when you give them the material.
The $75,000 price tag for a government jet to watch hockey and pound beers in a locker room writes the attack ad itself. It doesn't matter that Patel also conducted official meetings. The video is what people saw. And in politics, what people see is what exists.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson pivoted to the administration's record rather than relitigating the locker room footage. She pointed to the results:
"Crime rates are dropping across the board. This is a direct result of the President's law and order agenda which is being successfully implemented by his law and order team, including FBI Director Kash Patel."
Jackson added that "the President has full confidence in his Administration." That's the standard vote-of-confidence language, and notably, it came after the reported rebuke, not instead of it.
Trump corrected the problem privately and kept the public messaging unified. That's how leadership works: address the issue internally, present a united front externally.
Lost in the beer-chugging discourse is what the FBI was actually doing this week. The bureau fired at least 10 employees connected to the 2022 search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, according to three people familiar with the matter.
That search uncovered classified documents and led to one of two federal criminal cases against Trump, both of which were ultimately dismissed.
This is the real story. Patel has been systematically cleaning house at an agency that spent years weaponizing against the man who appointed him.
He disclosed that his own cellphone "toll" records were obtained during those investigations. The man running the FBI knows firsthand what it looks like when the bureau targets people for political reasons.
Also, while Patel was in Italy, an armed man entered the security perimeter of Trump's Florida residence at Mar-a-Lago. Trump was not present at the time. The incident underscores the constant threat environment in which the administration operates and the seriousness of the security apparatus Patel oversees.
Democrats want this to be a scandal. It isn't. It's a moment of poor judgment that the president caught and corrected. The left would love nothing more than to turn a locker room beer into Patel's undoing, because what Patel is actually doing at the FBI terrifies them.
Every agent fired for the Mar-a-Lago raid, every institutional reform, every step toward accountability for the bureau's years of political overreach represents the thing they fear most: consequences.
Durbin's call for an inspector general investigation is theatrical. The same Democrats who shrugged at the FBI being used as a political weapon against a sitting president now want an audit because the FBI director celebrated a hockey game too enthusiastically. The selective outrage isn't even clever anymore.
Patel should take note. Keep the patriotism, lose the government jet to sporting events. The mission is too important and the enemies too eager for the FBI director to hand them distractions on a silver platter.
There's a bureau to rebuild. That job doesn't happen in a locker room.
