The Penguins’ Stanley Cup victory hasn’t earned them an invitation to the White House. Not yet, anyway.
But if one comes, they will accept it.
“The Pittsburgh Penguins would never turn down a visit to the White House and, if invited, we would go as a team,” team CEO/president David Morehouse said Tuesday in a prepared statement.
The interesting twist is that several members of the team’s hierarchy are staunch progressives.
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Owner Ron Burkle is a major donor to Democratic causes, and Morehouse worked in the Clinton administration and on Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign.
Regardless, Morehouse said those political leanings would have no impact on the team’s willingness to go to the White House.
“We respect the office of the presidency of the United States and what it stands for,” he said. “Any opposition or disagreement with a president’s policies, or agenda, can be expressed in other ways.”
Because President Trump is such a polarizing figure, it’s possible that some team members might not want to make the trip to Washington, assuming one is scheduled.
There is precedent for that — former Boston goalie Tim Thomas, an outspoken conservative, declined to accompany his teammates to the White House in 2011, when Barack Obama was president — and a Penguins official said no player would be forced to attend.
One report on Tuesday said the Golden State Warriors, who won the NBA championship late Monday, would decline such an invite, though the validity of that report has been widely scrutinized.
Dave Molinari: Dmolinari@Post-Gazette.com and Twitter @MolinariPG
First Published: June 13, 2017, 3:47 p.m.
