The Great Once

Summary

Podcast Episode Summary: "The Great Once"

Pablo Torre Finds Out | Host: Pablo Torre | Guest: Bruce Arthur | April 17, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this award-winning, deeply reported episode, Pablo Torre and Canadian journalist Bruce Arthur dive into the unprecedented political and cultural tensions between Canada and the United States, catalyzed by President Donald Trump’s recent rhetoric suggesting Canada become the "51st state" of America. Intertwined with these geopolitical questions is the personal and public saga of Wayne Gretzky—Canada’s most revered hockey player—whose relationships, actions, and silence have become national flashpoints. The episode explores the meaning of patriotism, the power of sports as a unifier and distraction, and even investigates how political figures like FBI Director Kash Patel find solace (and controversy) in rec league hockey.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

I. Setting the Stage: Canada on Edge

• Bruce Arthur highlights Canada's historical comfort and lack of existential national crises, contrasting sharply with the present moment's anxiety ([02:21]).
  • Quote:
    "We've been just really lucky as a country, and all of a sudden, we're not." — Bruce Arthur ([02:21])
• Pablo frames the episode as an attempt to understand both the fever of anti-American sentiment rising in Canada and the symbolism of Wayne Gretzky at the center.

II. The Gretzky-Trump Nexus: Myth Meets Politics

• The show details Gretzky's significance to Canadian national identity. Bruce argues there is no American equivalent to Gretzky’s symbolic importance ([09:15]).
  • Quote:
    "He is so much better than anybody else... Wayne Gretzky is myth in this country." — Bruce Arthur ([10:46])
• Pablo and Bruce dissect Gretzky’s long-standing relationship with Donald Trump, which deepened after Gretzky “became” an American post-trade to LA in 1988, creating both cultural and personal ambiguity about his nationality ([13:14]–[14:54]).
• The pressure grows as Trump openly muses about making Canada the 51st state, repeatedly invoking Gretzky in these statements. Canadian anger mounts as their favorite son appears noncommittal ([15:07], [16:22]).

III. Hockey as Geopolitical Battleground

• The Four Nations Cup hockey game between the US and Canada becomes highly charged, exemplifying the fraught national mood. For the first time, Canadian fans boo the American anthem ([17:18]–[17:57]).
  • Quote:
    "We have never booed the American anthem, man. We don’t do that...and we have never booed the anthem until this year." — Bruce Arthur ([17:27])
• Gretzky further fumbles public perception—walking out by the American bench and handing out red caps reading “Be Great,” which many see as echoing Trump’s MAGA hats ([18:04]–[21:00]).
  • Quote:
    "I want to believe that Wayne Gretzky is just political, Mr. Magoo, and has no idea what’s happening at any given moment...given how we led to this moment, the payoff of here are some red caps that say, ‘Be Great’...it’s just like, what is—am I taking crazy pills?" — Pablo Torre ([20:12])

IV. The Fallout: Rebranding the "Great One"

• Public backlash is swift and harsh: protests, petitions to rename arenas, and the worst—someone smears feces on Gretzky’s statue in Edmonton ([23:17]).
• Gretzky’s American wife, Janet, posts in his defense, but is bombarded with vitriol and deletes the post ([23:51]). Trump defends Gretzky on social media ([24:34]), but further outrage ensues in Canada.
• Bruce explains that Canadians’ anger isn’t about expecting Gretzky to influence Trump, but wanting Gretzky to assert his love and loyalty to Canada in this fraught moment ([27:03]).
  • Quote:
    "Nobody expects Wayne Gretzky...to go to Donald Trump and say, knock it off. No more 51st state. ...That’s not the point." — Bruce Arthur ([27:03])

V. Investigating the Mysterious Kash Patel: Hockey, Power, and Escapism

• Pablo embarks on a “talkumentary” dig: Why is Trump’s FBI Director, Kash Patel—a noted conspiracy theorist—present in Gretzky’s hockey entourage? ([28:23])
• Pablo reveals Patel’s obsession with rec league hockey, playing defenseman for the “Dons” in suburban D.C. Despite his powerful DC roles, Sundays are carved out for hockey—the FBI “knows to leave him alone” ([31:45]).
  • Quote:
    "FBI officials quote, know to leave him alone on Sundays. It's a well carved out thing." — Anonymous teammate, as reported by Pablo Torre ([32:12])
• Hockey as escapism is explored, but the proximity between sporting life and the national security apparatus is both absurd and concerning ([33:39]–[36:39]).
• Congressional Hockey Caucus founder Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) discusses the limitations of sports as political bridge-building in today's climate ([39:56]–[40:47]).
  • Quote:
    "Sport can be a great uniter, a great healer...But I would tell you, even hockey has problems bridging the divide with some folks." — Rep. Mike Quigley ([39:56])
• The blurred lines: “hockey guy” camaraderie contrasts with the existential consequences of the actions and policies of those off the ice ([42:31]).

VI. Sports as Bread and Circus: Distraction and Daring

• The episode closes with Bruce and Pablo lamenting how sports—once a unifying civic ritual—now risks serving as displacement and distraction from dire political threats ([44:03]–[45:57]).
  • Quote:
    "The bread and circus thing becomes more and more acute the closer you get as an empire falls apart." — Bruce Arthur ([45:29])
• Bruce notes Canada’s new rallying cry is not Gretzky, but “Elbows Up,” inspired by legendary enforcer Gordie Howe, signaling new national toughness ([47:21]–[48:47]).
• Both acknowledge the resilience of people, both Canadian and American, and end with a renewed, if rueful, appreciation of shared values and justified anger ([48:49]–[49:16]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Canadian comfort and crisis:
  "Being in Canada...nothing has ever gone that wrong on a national level in the country...we've been just really lucky as a country, and all of a sudden, we're not." — Bruce Arthur ([02:21])

• On the myth of Gretzky:
  "Wayne Gretzky is myth in this country." — Bruce Arthur ([10:46])

• On Canadian anger at the 51st state notion:
  "It's hard to explain to Americans how pissed we are right now at America...and there's Wayne." — Bruce Arthur ([15:07])

• On sports as unity, and its limits:
  "You can bridge gaps with sports at its best. Absolutely...now the rules have changed. And I gotta tell you...it's not us that change the rules, man. We didn't change how this game works." — Bruce Arthur ([41:04])

• On the danger of distraction:
  "The bread and circus thing becomes more and more acute the closer you get as an empire falls apart." — Bruce Arthur ([45:29])

• On Canada’s new mindset:
  "Canada wants to be Gordie Howe right now. That's the song we're singing to ourselves." — Bruce Arthur ([48:47])

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Important Timestamps

• [02:21] Bruce Arthur recounts Canadian historical safety and emerging distress.
• [09:15] Bruce explains the mythic stature of Wayne Gretzky.
• [13:14]–[14:54] The Gretzky-Trump friendship: golf, status, and politics.
• [17:18]–[17:57] Canada and the U.S. at the Four Nations Cup; the unprecedented booing of the anthem.
• [20:12] Pablo critiques Gretzky’s symbolic miscues.
• [23:17] Gretzky statue vandalized in Edmonton.
• [27:03] Bruce on what Canadians truly expect from Gretzky.
• [31:45] Pablo investigates Kash Patel’s role in rec league hockey.
• [39:56] Rep. Mike Quigley on sports as a limited unifier.
• [44:03] Bruce and Pablo discuss sports as “bread and circus” in crumbling empires.
• [48:47] Bruce coins Canada’s new mantra: “Elbows Up,” channeling Gordie Howe.

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Tone and Style

The episode is marked by Pablo's signature mix of curiosity, humor, and journalistic rigor, paired with Bruce Arthur’s clear-eyed, passionate candor about Canadian culture and identity. The discussion flows from the absurd to the heartfelt, tied together by a sense of urgency and lament for what sports and international relations have become in the current geopolitical climate.

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For Listeners Who Haven’t Heard the Episode

This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in sports, politics, or the delicate relationship between national myth and contemporary reality. It mixes investigative storytelling with intimate conversation, and illuminates the complicated legacy of Wayne Gretzky and the fragility of Canadian-American friendship in an age of political turmoil and performative patriotism.

Transcript

[Pablo Torre]

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre. Today's episode is brought to you by DraftKings. DraftKings. The Crown is yours. And today we're gonna find out what this sound is.

[Bruce Arthur]

I have no political power with the Prime Minister or the President. That's between those two guys. And that's why you hold elections. And that's why people get to do what they want to do and say what they want to say.

[Pablo Torre]

Right after this ad.

[Bruce Arthur]

You're listening to DraftKings. I have a buddy in politics who wants me to become a conscience of Canada podcast. And I'm like, I don't know, man.

[Pablo Torre]

Your brand as the conscience of Canada, though, is why you're here talking to me. Because you are. That's what Bruce. Stop fighting it. Stop fighting it. You are the conscience of Canada. It's a great tagline.

[Bruce Arthur]

I don't know if I should be. Should I be? I don't. That's a weighty one. That's a heavy one.

[Pablo Torre]

It has never been more urgently required as I. Oh my God.

[Bruce Arthur]

Yeah, dude.

[Pablo Torre]

I asked myself, who do I want to talk to? As I have imminent questions and fascinations about what the is happening as it regards the American Canadian relationship. And immediately I was like, I just gotta. I just gotta get Bruce on a call. One of the most dramatic stories in sports turned into one of the strangest mysteries in politics this month. And all of it made me think of my old friend Bruce Arthur. Because Bruce is from Vancouver and he spent a dozen plus years as a sports writer for the National Post, which is how I first met him. And he has since spent the last 11 years or so writing columns about pretty much everything from hockey to Covid to politics for the Toronto Star. And so once Bruce's home country was all over the news, in large part due to two iconic figures that Bruce has covered extensively in Wayne Gretzky and Donald Trump. I wanted to find out what's really happening up there and how patriotism in Canada feels at this completely and I would argue, uniquely bizarre moment when you.

[Bruce Arthur]

Grew up in Canada for someone like me who was relatively middle class, right, and tall, white guy, all of that stuff. It is a comfortable place because nothing has ever gone that wrong on a national level in the country. I remember when Covet happened, I started asking people, what's the biggest crisis that ever came to your door in Canada? And we don't really have a lot of them, man. I talked to this guy who was a 90 year old former doctor about what it was like in World War II. And I said, well, how did that affect your life? World War II, that's a big one. And he said, well, they took the lamp posts on one of the highways downtown, and they melted them down and turned them into tanks. And I was like, that's it. He's like, that's it. That's the only way World War II impacted my life, man. So. But we've been just really lucky as a country, and all of a sudden, we're not.

[News Anchor]

President Trump plans to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexic starting tomorrow.

[Donald Trump]

Canada has been a very nasty negotiator against the United States, took advantage of the United States for a long time.

[Bruce Arthur]

I want to speak first directly to the American people. We don't want this. We want to work with you as a friend and ally, and we don't want to see you hurt either. But your government has chosen to do this to you.

[Donald Trump]

What I'd like to see Canada become our 51st state. Some people say that would be a long shot. If people wanted to play the game right, it would be 100% certain that they'd become a state.

[Pablo Torre]

So, yes, things have changed very radically between America and our upstairs neighbor, whose sovereignty President Trump keeps talking about taking essentially as his own, which is a concept that is so ridiculous on its face that when I first heard Trump say this, I thought the whole thing was very obviously a joke. You know, kind of like how people call Canada America's hat. And I think my Canadian friends, at least at first, felt similarly. But as the temperature on this story keeps ramping up, it's pretty safe to say that they don't feel that way anymore.

[Bruce Arthur]

The boiling of the frog in the pot is us. It really is. In all these different ways, what I've been trying to do, partly for me, is just hold on to what is real, what values matter, what principles matter.

[Pablo Torre]

I cannot help but think of that very thought and sensation when I'm turning on a hockey game, a very important hockey game in which I am anticipating that Alex Ovechkin is going to do the thing that once seemed unfathomable, impossible, with Wayne Gretzky looking on and the players for both teams saluting the greatest to ever lace them up in National Hockey League history. It just adds to the anticipation and the excitement in this building.

[Bruce Arthur]

The Friday night, it was really close, and it was in Washington, and it was electric, right? That was awesome. The great eight stand side by side.

[Pablo Torre]

With the great one.

[Bruce Arthur]

He comes this close to doing it at home in a Hatrick performance. And then it's Long island and you go, oh, man. Okay, we're going to do it in Long Island. And the anticipation is great. Here is. He scores number 895. It's one of those moments that you can immediately picture as part of a documentary 15 years from now, you know what I mean? Like that's, it's going to be, it's going to be something that will resonate through time. Like I always say all the time, it's a team sport. Without my boys, the whole organization, the, the fans, the trainers, coaches, I would never stand there and obviously I would never pass a great one.

I'm happy for Alex. My grandfather was Russian. He'd be really happy that a Russian broke my record.

So good for Alex. Of course Gretzky was going to be there, because when Wayne Gretzky broke Gordie Howe's record, Gordie Howe was there. And there is in hockey a value on tradition in this way, a value on paying homage to the game and what it means. And so of course Gretzky was there. It's Gary Bettman, the commissioner of the NHL, Wayne Gretzky. This all makes sense so far. And then also Kash Patel was there both games. Kash Patel, the director of the FBI and at the time the atf, and a bug eyed conspiracy theorist.

[Pablo Torre]

And that's when I said, hold the on. I didn't know there was an entourage in which there was noted, as you say, bug eye conspiracist. Kash Patel, longtime intimate of Steve Bannon, now just in the box with the great one. What was your reaction when you saw him there?

[Bruce Arthur]

I mean, the first one was the same as everyone else, right? What the. I don't know. Like, who would be the worst member of the cabinet to be in the box with Wayne Gretzky and the commissioner of the NHL? And let's just zoom out for one second. If this had happened in almost in any administration before 2016, and it's a member of cabinet or someone like in the box with an NHL, especially for a Washington player, nobody blinks twice, right? Yep, nobody does. But times have changed. Things are different. And so I just didn't understand why him. We had seen Gretzky hanging out with Trump because he's known Trump forever, but he's always said, I'm not interested in politics, so how are you hanging out with the other guys as well know? And how's the NHL saying yes to that?

[Pablo Torre]

So I want to do a couple of things here today. I want to actually try and help both of us answer the question of why the is Cash Patel in this box? Why is he in the entourage? But in exchange, I need you to help me understand how we got here when it came to Wayne Gretzky. And yes, broadly speaking, Canada and the United States as a relationship unto itself.

[Bruce Arthur]

You don't have a Wayne Gretzky. There is no Wayne Gretzky in America. You have the Wayne Gretzky in America. You don't have a Wayne Gretzky in America. It's not Tom Brady. It's not LeBron James or Michael Jordan. It's not Muhammad Ali. It's none of these people. There's no direct analog to what Wayne Gretzky means to Canada. What hockey is beyond the sport that we care the most about, beyond the kind of lingua franca in big and small towns across the country is. It is a song we sing ourselves that pertains to who we are in terms of our national character. When Wayne Gretzky was young, he was magic. If you go back and look at 1980's hockey games, a lot of the goalies, it's like they didn't know how to bend their legs, right? Goaltending wasn't good. There was a lot of guys out there who were out of breath on every shift. It was not as difficult a game. And yet even in that context, Wayne Gretzky made hockey look so easy.

[Pablo Torre]

Wayne Gretzky in on goal, gets the winner.

[Bruce Arthur]

Edmonton win 5, 4. A short handed goal. He toyed with the game. That's the highest compliment I can give any athlete, right? He could do anything. Cuts in front of his teammate, Kretsky scores. That idea of skate to where the puck will be a hat trick for.

[Pablo Torre]

Wayne Gretzky in the first period, it's.

[Bruce Arthur]

Like he was playing on a different plane of existence than anybody else. You can make arguments for Mario Lemieux and Bobby Orr and Maybe eventually Conor McDavid, whatever you want. Wayne Gretzky has more assists than anyone else, has points. He has a thousand more points than anyone else who's ever played the game. He is so much better than anybody else. When you say the great one, that is our highest compliment as a nation, right? Like Wayne Gretzky is myth in this country. And it's with mixed emotions, a heavy heart for our community and our hockey club. But I guess with delight and sincere best wishes for Wayne Gretzky that I announce and I guess more important, confirm that the Edmonton Oilers have agreed to trade Wayne Gretzky to Los Angeles.

[Pablo Torre]

So when it comes to the summer of 88, and Wayne is technically still Canada's, but geographically now coming to America. Your reaction, the country's reaction, you would.

[Bruce Arthur]

Characterize how I remember the press conference. I, like, still remember the press. Everyone remembers the press conference because it's one of those moments that gets played in documentaries over and over because Wayne cries. Wayne dabs at his eyes with a Kleenex.

Promised mess I wouldn't do this.

I promised Mess I wouldn't cry. Talking about Mark Messier, there's a book by my friend Stephen Brent called Gretzky's Tears about the trade. And with Gretzky, when you find out Gretzky's traded, you remember where you are. And then he go. And then, and then it's. He goes to la, Hollywood, marriage to a, to an actress, and like, he never moves back. He is fundamentally American, raises his family in America, and he always talks about how his kids and his grandkids are American. He is fundamentally an American man. Still, still has Canadian citizenship and, and says he does not have American citizenship, though, because he promised, promised his dad.

[Pablo Torre]

That tension, though, of, like, him recognizing on some geopolitical level, some higher level, that it still matters what he technically is while behaving in a way that contradicts that technicality. I wonder when it was the first time he realized, oh, this guy's spending a lot of time with Donald Trump.

[Bruce Arthur]

He met Trump in the mid-90s in New York, right? Because he ends his career in New York. And at that time, I think he, he actually sought Trump out, like he was looking for a smart real estate guy and someone gave him Trump's name and they become friends because Trump likes celebrity. And probably the first, the first presidential term is when it starts to come up on the radar, right? Golf tournaments, that kind of thing.

[Pablo Torre]

I was going to say the, the thing I found when it came to the golf stuff, because Wayne loves golf and Trump loves golf, is that there was a 2017 round. It was Tiger woods, it was Dustin Johnson, and Dustin Johnson, for those not initiated, this is Wayne Gretzky's son in law. And it's one of those rounds, reportedly, according to a golf analyst, Brad Faxon, who was working for Fox Sports, where Trump, you know, is putting down a score that didn't quite account for the two balls he hit into the water. And then in 2021, it's Paulina Gretzky, it's Dustin Johnson, it's Donald Trump, it's Halloween, the families are hanging out now. They're just together quite A bit.

[Bruce Arthur]

It seems they're friends. And one of the kind of startling parts of all this. Who's friends with Donald Trump? Think about that. Just on a fundamental level, you can ask the same question of Elon Musk. Do they have friends? Are they capable? How are they capable of friendship? If you're hanging around Donald Trump, you're doing it, I would think, because there is a transactional element or because you like his politics. That's the two categories, more or less. Except that Wayne has said over and over he has no interest in politics. He says it publicly, he says it privately.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, also, if you're not, you know, politically inclined, which is, of course, his. His.

[Bruce Arthur]

His.

[Pablo Torre]

Right. It's a weird thing to be at Mar a Lago the night of the election at a table with who, Bruce.

[Bruce Arthur]

Elon Musk and Donald Trump. And not to put too fine a point on it, but the two men who are actively destroying America as it was. It's hard to explain to Americans how pissed we are right now at America, how pissed and unbelievably outraged we are. Not just about how you're treating us, but how you're treating yourselves.

[Donald Trump]

I called him Governor Trudeau, because they should be the 51st state, really. It would make a great state. And the people of Canada.

[Mike Quigley]

Canada like it.

[Donald Trump]

They pay lower taxes. They have virtually no military. They have a very small military. They pay less than 1%. They're about the lowest payer in NATO. They're supposed to pay much more. They haven't been paying.

[Bruce Arthur]

We are so incandescently angry because everything about how this country has existed since its founding has been predicated on the fact that we are next to our friend.

[Donald Trump]

I was with Wayne Gretzky. I said, wayne, would you like to be the governor of Canada? I can't imagine. I can't imagine anybody doing any better than Wayne. Wayne was not too interested in. But. But I think he probably would have liked statehood. He's a friend.

[Bruce Arthur]

We live next to our friend. Sometimes our friend makes bad decisions, man. But he's still our friend, right? No one's messing with us because of him. Everything about our country is predicated on America and where we are geographically. And now we're so mad. We're so angry. And there's Wayne.

[Pablo Torre]

When you zoom out again and you take in, like, the larger context of what is happening in hockey itself, to continue to make a metaphor reality at the Four nations cup. And you have Canada in February in.

[Bruce Arthur]

The final, and it's geopolitical in a way that a U.S. canada hockey game has never been.

[News Anchor]

As a tariff dispute with Canada heats up, relations with the US Are increasingly on ice.

[Bruce Arthur]

We have never booed the American anthem, man. We don't do that. America's our favorite TV show. It is like, just as. It's as much as like, we sit, we make the jokes about it. No one wants to live above a meth lab and all that kind of thing. But, like, we have great affection towards America and we have respect, especially respect, growing respect for American hockey. And we have never booed the anthem until this year. And there were people in this country who said, we're better than that. We shouldn't boo the anthem. That guys, no.

[Pablo Torre]

Canadian hockey legend Wayne Gretzky has come under fire following his appearance as the honorary team captain for Canada.

[Bruce Arthur]

And I will say the people who are doing the television broadcast that night did not do Wayne any favors. And the people who were in charge of the event that night did not do Wayne any favors because he could have walked out two different tunnels. There's one by the American bench, there's one by the Canadian bench. Obviously, Wayne should walk out by the Canadian bench, right? No. Whoever. And this isn't Wayne's decision. He walks out by the American bench. Okay. We're still fine. He walks by the American bench and he gives them thumbs up. Okay. This isn't ideal for the moment. Wayne has fundamentally misread the moment. But he has done so, I believe. Because Wayne, I. I do believe Wayne sees hockey players and he admires them and he respects them as we should as Canadians. Those guys are awesome hockey players. Fine. And then the camera on the Canadian broadcast cuts away and Wayne, I presume, gave thumbs up to the Canadian players. I have to believe he did that. We never saw it in this country. And so there's a whole bunch of Canadians who think Wayne just gave thumbs up to the American players. And by the way, his counterpart is wearing the American jersey.

[Pablo Torre]

That's right.

[Bruce Arthur]

Wayne is wearing not a stitch of red. He's wearing the bluest blue. Like, just. There's so many fundamental misreadings in that moment. Like they fight to start an international hockey game three times in nine seconds. I'm not a fighting guy. That was unbelievable. And this four nation face off matchup.

[Pablo Torre]

Is underway and the gloves are off. It was you.

[Bruce Arthur]

That was you.

[Pablo Torre]

Having to surrender your pacifism at the altar of what was the best theater of violence I've seen in sports in the last couple decades. Yes, it was Must see tv. It was amazing.

[Bruce Arthur]

It was Amazing. This was. This was set up.

[Pablo Torre]

Here they come. Bring it. Right.

[Bruce Arthur]

Right before the first Tachunk fight. This was set up. Here you go.

[Pablo Torre]

It is exactly, exactly what you dream of if you're the NHL. And spoiler alert, you guys win in overtime.

[Bruce Arthur]

We sure do, buddy.

[Pablo Torre]

Speaking of how America's hat reacted in this great moment of celebration, in comes Wayne Gretzky, and he has a gift that is appropriate, given that. That term of affection, he hands out these red caps. I. I want to believe that Wayne Gretzky is just political, Mr. Magoo, and has no idea what's happening at any given moment. But given how we led to this moment, the payoff of here are some red caps that say, be great on them, which is, I don't know, a half inch away from the thing that Trump has as his actual slogan. It's just like, what is. Am I. Am I taking crazy pills? Is how I was feeling.

[Bruce Arthur]

So you've arrived at one of the central questions, which is how much of this is Wayne truly existing in this sweet summer child kind of existence? Right? Where politics is truly something that he sees from across the street and keeps walking? How much does he understand the implications here? And in that moment, you probably should ask yourself, do I need to do this? Do I need to give them gifts at all? Would be the question. And if I do, do I give them red hats? No. When you. I just. When you don't, you don't do that. Because, again, the thing that I. The thing that I can't square here is that Wayne Gretzky understands what it means to be Wayne Gretzky. He has understood that, because to be a. A great hockey player in this country is also to be a politician to a degree. And he understands what it means when Wayne Gretzky stands next to somebody. And he still doesn't seem to understand this, even if he is a political. Mr. Magoo. That's the part I don't get. And then the second part I don't get is this. If you care, if you are a patriotic Canadian, which I believe you are, if you care about how you are viewed in the country, which I believe you do, just come out and say it. Say that we will never be the 51st state. Say that I may not have power over this, but God damn it, I'm a proud Canadian and Canada will always exist and say that I disagree with my friend Donald and we do not talk politics, but in this regard, I believe in Canada more than I believe in him. Say any of that. Say it has not said it.

[Pablo Torre]

And so the citizens of Canada have been filling this rhetorical void. They've rebranded the Great One as the Great Once, which I think is a pretty good nickname. And they've also launched petitions to rename the various Wayne Gretzky drives and parkways and arenas all across the country. But the most telling thing, I think, was how people reimagined his statue.

[Bruce Arthur]

People smeared feces on the statue in Edmonton of Wayne Gretzky.

[News Anchor]

A statue of Canadian hockey icon Wayne Gretzky has been vandalized in Edmonton. It appears to be the latest show of display pleasure with Gretzky in recent months for his friendship with US President Donald Trump amid his trade war with Canada.

[Bruce Arthur]

They saw what appeared to be and strongly smelled like feces all over that statue. Think about what you have to do to do that. You ever try to get a poop sample and have to give it to the doctor? Like, this is. Like this is worse.

[Pablo Torre]

Which now brings us to the slinging involving Janet Gretzky, because Janet, who is Wayne's American wife, as we said, who Wayne lives with in America, posted this on Instagram. I have never met anyone who is more proud to be a Canadian. And it has broken his heart to read and see the mean comments, end quote in the comments, in case you were wondering, in response to this claim of unparalleled Canadian pride, were also mean. They were so mean that Janet then deleted this post, apparently which led a friend to come to Wayne's defense.

[News Anchor]

Donald Trump is defending Wayne Gretzky and rebuking criticism the Great One is facing over their close ties. Trump posted on social media saying, wayne is my friend and he wants to make me happy, adding, he's the greatest Canadian of them all, and I'm therefore making him a free agent because I don't want anyone in Canada to say anything bad about him. Trump goes on to say Gretzky supports Canada the way it is, as he should, even though it's not nearly as good as it should be as part of the greatest and most powerful country in the world.

[Pablo Torre]

And it will not surprise you to learn that he goes on, on and on about Wayne and Janet. And it's just him taking the greatest Canadian of all time, which he calls him, and taking him as his own.

[Bruce Arthur]

And trying to defend him. One of the astonishing things to me in this is when Trump says that, obviously Wayne's gone to him and gone, could you get him off my back, Donald? Right. Which shows such a fundamental misreading of this. If that's what happened, if he asked Donald to say something, defending him. That is such an unbelievable misreading of the mood in this country right now that you wonder what planet he's on.

[Pablo Torre]

It is the opposite of skating to where the puck is going, actually.

[Bruce Arthur]

Yes, yes, exactly right. You're skate, you're getting as far away from the puck as you. You are sitting in the stand. You are, you are in your car. You driving away from the arena to the airport to get on a plane and go somewhere else. That the puck's over there and you are over here. And we're so mad. We are so mad. But at, at this point of the story, who has defended Wayne? Donald Trump and Janet Gretzky. Has Wayne said anything to this point? No. Has he spoken to people privately? Yes. Has he said anything publicly? No. He eventually does get there.

I don't worry about those kind of things because you can't make everybody happy. But trust me, I have no political power with the prime minister or the president. That's between those two guys. And that's why you hold elections. And that's why people get to do what they want to do and say what they want to say.

No one expects Wayne Gretzky. I'm going to say this now on behalf. I'm going to say this on behalf of Canada. Nobody in this country, there's 40 million people in this country. Nobody expects Wayne Gretzky to go to Donald Trump and say, knock it off. No more 51st state. And expect Donald Trump to listen. We do not expect that. You are not our ambassador. We understand. Even though you have access to him, we know you're not going to influence him. That's not the point. It's not the point. You have to say what all the politicians in this country of every stripe have said. We will never be the 51st state. We will always be Canada. And for Canada, especially Canada, though, and I need to emphasize this, we have been the safest nation in the world. We had the baddest big brother in the world. Next to us, the biggest economy in the world. Next to us, the American military, the American economy. We are part of norad. We are part of NATO. The whole idea of NATO is you attack one of us, you attack all of us. And what does that functionally mean in the world, the United States of America?

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Bruce Arthur]

Everyone who grew up in this country grew up safe on a national level, more than any country, I would say, in the world. And now we're not. It's destabilizing.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, it's, it's, it's destabilizing. It is disorienting. It is that page in the history book where you're like, did someone just Photoshop Kash Patel into the luxury box next to Wayne Gretzky?

[Bruce Arthur]

Ash Patel.

[Pablo Torre]

And it raised questions that we at Pablo Torre finds out have been spending a couple weeks investigating.

[Bruce Arthur]

Oh, you guys are good at that.

[Pablo Torre]

All right, so Cash Patel, the guy in the luxury box who is watching history right next to the great one, the guy Trump appointed the director of the FBI and also the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which is a statement, now that I say it aloud, which once seemed even more improbable than feces smeared statue of Wayne Gretzky in Edmonton. Because before Kash Patel was appointed to oversee the FBI and ATF and their tens of thousands of employees, Kash Patel was most famous for vowing in a book he titled Government Gangsters that he was going to go after his enemies, his enemies in the deep state.

[Mike Quigley]

I'd shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopening the next day as a museum of the deep state. And I take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals. Go be cops. You're cops. Go be cops.

[Pablo Torre]

And more recently, in fact, you may also recall how FBI Director Patel handled being questioned by Congress about the infamous Signal Group chat that his fellow members of the Trump administration. Administration used to plan airstrikes on Yemen.

[Mike Quigley]

I'm not going to comment on that.

[News Anchor]

Because you're the director of the FBI. You don't believe it's appropriate to comment.

[Mike Quigley]

On that because there's a process in place, there's an ongoing litigation, and the National Security Council is reviewing this matter. And I'm not going to discuss any open or closed investigation.

[News Anchor]

Ongoing investigation, literally, the lawsuit happened today or yesterday afternoon. And the idea that you don't have an opinion on this at this point is frustrating.

[Mike Quigley]

No, it's not. I'm not going to prejudge any matters.

[Bruce Arthur]

And the men and women of the.

[Mike Quigley]

FBI will all the balls and strikes.

[Pablo Torre]

But something you may not know is that as of last week, Cash Patel had been removed from his duties as acting ATF director without any explanation from the Trump administration. Although there was one note from Reuters which reported that Patel, quote, had not been a presence at ATF headquarters since the day he was sworn in. And so part of what I wanted to find out today was what Kash Patel had been doing all of this time. Instead, it turns out that for More than a decade, Kash Patel has been playing for a team called the Dons. Now, I don't know if you're familiar, Bruce, with the world of adult men's rec league hockey, but we're entering the world of adult men's rec league hockey in and around Washington, D.C. now.

[Bruce Arthur]

The Dons.

[Pablo Torre]

The Dons.

[Bruce Arthur]

You're kidding me.

[Pablo Torre]

A dynasty, Bruce. A dynasty. In the apparently thriving Sunday night rec league scene in D.C. this, by the way, is taking place to set the scene in this part of the documentary. And in Northern Virginia, at the Washington capital's practice facility, which is where Kash Patel's Dons at one point, wins 76 games in a row.

[Bruce Arthur]

Wow.

[Pablo Torre]

And so we here at. Pablo Torre finds out, reached out to one of his teammates, one of Kash Patel's teammates on the Dons, Bruce, offering the condition of anonymity. Because, you know, he's talking about the director of the FBI. And what this teammate told us about how Kash Patel spends his time is that FBI officials, quote, know to leave him alone on Sundays. It's a well carved out thing, end quote. He's gonna be playing games for the Dons, and the FBI knows to let Kash Patel take the ice. And if it's not enough to just imagine that, you should also know that at one point In May of 2024, there was a fundraiser and reportedly Kash Patel, whose arm was in a sort of brace at the time, was joking that he had injured that arm from, quote, kicking the out of the deep state, end quote. But what really happened, we are informed, is that at the Don's championship game the year before Cash, Patel tore his bicep and didn't tell anybody. But because he is a hockey player, Bruce, because he is a genuine hockey guy, the Dons win. They take a team picture. He doesn't say anything to anybody. He, quote, pounded beers in the parking lot, end quote. And then got surgery and then presented this as a wound of kicking the out of the deep state.

[Bruce Arthur]

Isn't it actually kind of relatable? There are very few things about this crowd that I find to be relatable. I find this to be relatable. That there are parts of your life that you are passionate about, that you believe in, that you carve out for yourself, which we all need. Right. As the world goes in the direction that it's going.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes. We all need a third space. Right? As they say.

[Bruce Arthur]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

And Kash Patel's third space is his Don's. It's this Sunday night game.

[Bruce Arthur]

Yeah. Is he any good?

[Pablo Torre]

Well, Bruce, you should know that Kash Patel, scouting report on him as a hockey guy. We have that, too. You know, he's not much of a scorer, statistically speaking. Last season, he had one goal, one assist in 14 games. According to the anonymous teammate, quote, his slap shot from the point, sometimes they come head high and you gotta duck, end quote. Which, you know, targeting for the FBI director may be a little worrisome, but. And this is an earnest compliment. He's a hell of a defenseman.

[Bruce Arthur]

I was gonna say. What position does Cash Patel play? So he's a defenseman. He's an undersized defenseman. I would say, based on the. On what I can tell from him.

[Pablo Torre]

He'S good at obstructing, as it were. And, in fact, on that note, we did reach out to the spokeswoman for Cash Patel, Bruce, and what she told us was that the story that his anonymous teammate had given us where Cash Patel was having those beers in that parking lot post game was false. And she added, quote, I don't doubt that there were some of these guys having beers. That's just not Cash, end quote. But one of the things that brings us back to how we started the story is that the one game that Kash Patel was eager to miss for the Dons was, in fact, a couple Sundays ago, when there he was on Long island as the Islanders were playing the Capitals in New York with Wayne Gretzky. And one other thing we learned, Bruce, is that the Dons group chat was electrified when they spotted their guy. And if you want to take a guess as to what platform they use to communicate, I will give you one chance.

[Bruce Arthur]

I'm gonna say signal.

[Pablo Torre]

Pablo, the Dons have a signal group chat. Bruce. The DODS have a signal group chat with Cash Patel, and it was blowing up. And what Cash Patel's anonymous teammate did tell Pablo Tori finds out of seeing Cash Patel with Wayne Gretzky and Alex Ochkin in this Make a Wish fever dream for the Director of the FBI. He clarifies, quote, about the chat. No battle plans on there, but we send a lot of memes and pictures and videos. That was the hot topic for the weekend. Everybody was very jealous and excited to see him on there. It wasn't in any of our bingo cards that he'd be with the great one for that, end quote.

[Bruce Arthur]

If you're a hockey guy and you get to meet Wayne Gretzky, you'll remember that the rest of your life.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, absolutely. And, no, that's Wayne Gretzky. At no point in the chronicling here am I saying that this is something that I am shocked to discover Cash Patel has been doing. But it's just funny that when it comes to here are my priorities, reportedly, as we understand it, number one, hockey, Number two, running the FBI, number three, and a distant number three, the atf, to the point that he no longer is, in fact running the ATF and has chosen number one and number two in some combination, depending on which day of the week that gets priority.

[Bruce Arthur]

I commend you for getting one of those guys to talk to you, actually, because I would imagine they'd be a little bit nervous about it.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, I mean, we were.

[Bruce Arthur]

We.

[Pablo Torre]

We are, I mean, eager to get on the record sources wherever possible. That one felt like a reasonable one to grant anonymity to. But luckily, that's not the only team that Cash Patel plays hockey on. So there is this thing, Bruce, called the Congressional Hockey caucus in Washington, D.C. i don't know if you have an equivalent in Canada. Part of me suspects that the entirety of the Canadian governmental system is a version of this. But it's the guys who love hockey getting together. And it turns out, sponsoring last month a bipartisan Congressional Hockey Challenge. And this pits the lawmakers against the lobbyists. A very American ritual in that regard. And one anonymous teammate on this team told us that Cash Patel was, in fact, one of the best players on the ice. That he did, of course, in true hockey guy fashion, hang around for beers in the locker room after that game as well. And so we were left wondering, like, can we get anybody on the record here, just like any person in the D.C. american governmental hockey ecosystem to talk about Kash Patel? And so what we did was we reached out to the guy who formed the Congressional Hockey Caucus, a congressman named Mike Quigley from Illinois. And you just immediately realized, Bruce, in ways that I was. I was sort of, again, taken aback by. Because it's been happening for so long, and I am not enough of a hockey guy to know about it. There's a real underground hockey scene in Washington. It's lawmakers, it's law enforcement, it's these House leagues and club hockey and beer leagues, all of that stuff that does provide an escape, an escape at which you can bond with the people that you may otherwise be in great political tension with. But Cash Patel is somebody that Representative Quigley has been aware of for years. He's known him since he was a congressional staffer. Cash Patel was. Quigley sits on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. They're going to be sitting in classified briefings together. And what he told us in no uncertain terms is that he's not quite afraid of Kash Patel's slap shot.

[Mike Quigley]

I've skated with hall of Famers. I can handle Cash Patel.

[Pablo Torre]

He is, though, worried about actual retribution.

[Mike Quigley]

You know, you try to have some common ground where you. You realize there's more, that there should be more that unites this country than divides us. I would say, with respect, it's different with this administration. I honestly see it as a retribution tour, and it's not our imagination. Mr. Patel has said they're going to go after the people who are enemies of President Trump. He talked about journalists and a list of 60 people. I'm not making it up. What I'm telling you is sport can be a great uniter, a great healer, and something you forget and remind yourself. You, you know, you don't hate the person that you're. That you're working with here in Congress. But I would tell you, even hockey has problems bridging the divide with. With some folks.

[Bruce Arthur]

That's it. Right. Is that when you argue about sports with people from other fan bases, you're still all in the same arena, if that makes sense. Right?

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Bruce Arthur]

Like, you'll see sometimes it goes up to the level of fights and, like, real animosity. But even, even rivals are united in a love of something. And that's one of the great things about sports, is that you can sit in a bar and watch a game and talk to someone you'd never talk to otherwise. Right. You can, you can bridge gaps with sports at its best. Absolutely. It can do that. And some of that world is gone. It used to be you could forgive Wayne Gretzky for being friends, whether he's a political Mr. Magoo, as you put it, or not. With Donald Trump, it used to be you could at least you could let it go, and now you can't let it go. Now the rules have changed. And I gotta tell you, as someone who sits where I sit, it's not us that change the rules, man. We didn't change how this game works. We didn't change the circumstances. We are reacting to the circumstances. And that's where I come back to, Wayne, is that it was never unforgivable before, and now it is.

[Pablo Torre]

There's a number of quotes we've been getting from these anonymous teammates and people who know Kash Patel where they will all say, in the hockey context, he's a normal guy. He's one of us. You think, based on the headlines, he's evil. You meet him, and he is somebody who will play through a torn bicep, who will, you know, crush beers in the parking lot, who will just be one of the people that you want to win a game with. The point that I think you and Representative Quigley are both making, though, is that there is a danger to that takeaway when what it's enabling is the actual erasure of an entire country as a country and the freedoms of people when it comes to the basic expectations of what we're not supposed to do. When you leave the locker room, that's this, Bruce, where I'm like, I love sports. As the lone monoculture we share, I say it all the time. I love being in the stands next to people who have none of the same beliefs politically, musically, artistically, ideologically, whatever, but the very basic minimum threshold of respect. Now it feels like sports has been perverted in order to be used to enable something that it would be irresponsible for us to not look into a little bit deeper.

[Bruce Arthur]

So what I wrote the day after I was named the coronavirus columnist is that Rudy Gobert might have saved the world because up until then, the virus was marching, but it wasn't real. It was ignorable. And then Rudy Gobert caught Covid, and by the end of the night, the NBA had stopped by the next day, the NHL, Major League Baseball, every sport had stopped. Disneyland had closed its doors. The world had to pay attention. Right. And I've thought about that in terms of what you just said. I've thought about that in terms of sports a little bit right now. And in terms of what's going on in terms of the United States, a lot of it is still ignorable when the wires are being pulled out of the walls of the US Government, and it's going to kill a million and a half kids overseas. Right. Because USAID was keeping those kids alive in all these different ways. That's monstrous. But it doesn't come to your door, right? Unless you read about it. Even if you read about it, it doesn't touch you. When you talk about what's happening in terms of even the stock market, that's a harder one to ignore. Smarter people than me are looking at the global economy and going, nah, I don't like the looks of this.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, but it's already been spun. It's been spun, Bruce. We. This was always the plan. We. Whatever was alleged to be the danger was never a danger at all, is what they're now plausibly saying.

[Bruce Arthur]

But the stuff that's happening, which is like the drumbeat of our world, the stuff that makes you feel normal, sports is one of those things. And it hasn't been touched at all in all this. Right. Like, it's just, it's just rolling along. And I think about that and I don't know what the answer is. I'm not saying we should stop sports or anything like that, but I'm saying that, like, the bread and circus thing becomes more and more acute the closer you get as an empire falls apart. Right, Bruce?

[Pablo Torre]

I love circuses, I love bread, I love all of this. We both do. The question of the bread and the circus, though, is what are we being distracted from?

[Bruce Arthur]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

And when the stakes of that distraction, when the very thinly veiled subtext of this box at this record setting game is, here is Donald Trump's good friend, here is his director of the FBI, here is Canada's favorite son that doesn't want to acknowledge the basic thing that Canada has been begging him to do. We aren't so much distracting as we are daring, daring everybody to say what's obvious here. And using sports and its, and its, its metaphorical potency to turn it into something that isn't as clearly up as it is.

[Bruce Arthur]

Last weekend, a bunch of people showed up in the streets in America, right? Big towns, small towns, all over.

[News Anchor]

And good evening, I'm Kathy Barrett.

[Mike Quigley]

And I'm Jonathan Gonzalez. Now, from New York City to la, demonstrations across the country have drawn thousands of people.

[News Anchor]

Protesters are speaking out against President Trump's policies and Elon Musk's forced layoffs across government agencies.

[Mike Quigley]

We begin our team coverage.

[Bruce Arthur]

And there was a moment where I'm sitting there and I'm looking through like the footage from all this. When I was watching those people on the streets, I got emotional, man. It reminded me that it doesn't have to be this way. Right. It reminded me that people can fight and you don't have to go along with it. You don't have to pretend it's normal. That hockey game, they pretended it was normal. But I'll say this, like when Canada, what's the slogan that Canada has adopted as its national rallying cry? It's hockey related, but it's not related to Wayne Gretzky in any way as a player. It is as far away from Wayne Gretzky as a hockey player as he can possibly be. It is related to the guy whose record Wayne Gretzky broke for the all time goal record in the NHL. It's Gordy Howe. Elbows up. Because if you with Gordy, Gordy would come find you in the corner. Gordy would do that in his 50s. Elbows up. Wayne Gretzky was the hockey player none of us could be. Gordy was the hockey player. We told ourselves we were just a tough, the baddest guy, right? That's who we're trying to tell ourselves we are right now. Canada wants to be Gordie Howe right now. That's the song we're singing to ourselves.

[Pablo Torre]

Bruce, I just want you to know I think there are a lot of Americans whose elbows you can count on, buddy.

[Bruce Arthur]

That's the other thing we all remind ourselves up here, by the way. And that's what I remind a lot of people in conversations that I have up here. There's a lot of good Americans, man. Millions. It's a lot of good Americans.

[Pablo Torre]

This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out a Meadowlark Media production and I'll talk to you next time.

[Bruce Arthur]

Sa.