The thing about the Olympics is that they’re supposed to be this big kumbaya moment where the world sets aside its differences and watches people do physics-defying gymnastics on ice. But this year, every international reporter in Milan is looking at Team USA the way you look at a friend who shows up to brunch wearing sunglasses indoors and saying they’re “fine.” The global press corps is trying so hard to be polite about it, but the subtext is louder than a stadium speaker: “What in the holy hell is happening in your country, and should we be worried about being downwind from it.”
You can see it in the questions… the careful phrasing, the soft tone, the way journalists from countries with their own political disasters still manage to look at Americans with a kind of sympathetic horror usually reserved for people who’ve just survived a tornado. A BBC reporter asked Nathan Chen how it feels to represent the U.S. “in such a dynamic moment,” which is British for “your country looks like it’s being run by a malfunctioning blender, are you safe?!” A German journalist asked Mikaela Shiffrin whether she feels “supported by her nation,” which is European for “your president called you a loser on the internet again, blink twice if you need extraction.” Even the Canadians - the NICEST people on Earth - are asking questions with the tone of someone offering a blanket and a cup of tea to a traumatized neighbor.
And the athletes know exactly what’s happening. They’re trying to answer honestly without accidentally triggering an international incident. They’re trying to talk about training and teamwork while the rest of the world is trying to figure out if the United States is still a functioning democracy or if it’s just a very expensive theme park built on top of a sinkhole. Every time an American athlete steps up to a microphone, you can practically hear the global audience holding its breath, waiting to see if they’ll say something like “I’m proud to be here” or “please send help, we haven’t known peace since 2016.”
Meanwhile, Trump is back home rage-posting like a man whose phone is surgically attached to his hand, calling athletes “weak,” “ungrateful,” and “losers” from the comfort of a golf cart he uses to travel distances most people cover by shifting their weight slightly forward. The international reaction to this is a mix of disbelief, amusement, and the kind of secondhand embarrassment that makes people physically recoil. French commentators openly laughed on air when he insulted Chloe Kim… not because it was funny, but because the absurdity broke their brains. A Japanese broadcaster paused mid-sentence, blinked twice, and said, “This is… unusual,” which is the diplomatic equivalent of “what in the actual fuck?”
And the global public? Oh, they’re having a field day. Social media across Europe and Asia is full of memes of American athletes doing incredible things while Trump sits in a golf cart like a sunburned parade float calling them failures. Italians are joking that Team USA deserves honorary citizenship for surviving whatever is happening back home. Australians are posting TikToks saying “America, babe, blink if you need us to call someone.” Even the Swiss, known for their straight-faced neutrality, are making jokes about the U.S. needing a wellness check.
But beneath the humor is something heavier. The world is worried. Not in a dramatic, cinematic way… in a quiet, practical, “your house is on fire and we’re not sure you’ve noticed” way. They’re watching a global superpower unravel in slow motion, and they’re watching its athletes try to carry the weight of that unraveling on their shoulders while still performing at the highest level of human capability. It’s surreal. It’s heartbreaking. It’s infuriating. It’s Unfugginbelievable.
And yet, somehow, the athletes are still showing up. Still competing. Still representing the version of America the world actually likes - the hardworking, disciplined, community-driven America that believes in fairness and grit and not screaming conspiracy theories at strangers in line at the bank. The world sees that. They see the athletes trying to hold onto something good while the political circus back home keeps setting itself on fire for attention. We end here with the same question the world keeps asking, over and over, in a dozen languages and a hundred accents:
Is America Okay?
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