Wayne Gretzky finally comments on his ties to Donald Trump amid Canadian backlash

When Washington Capitals’ Alex Ovechkin broke his NHL career goals record, Wayne Gretzky was in attendance in New York with Trump’s FBI Director, Kash Patel, which got people talking.

When he was a guest on a radio show Monday on AM-640 in Toronto hosted by Ben Mulroney, son of former consecutive Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, Gretzky faced questions about his relationship with Donald Trump and offered his first public comments since the American President began his second term. Gretzky has been dealing with significant backlash due to his ties to Trump, who has threatened to annex Canada and eliminate their existence as an independence country.

Fans across Canada are questioning his loyalty to his native Canada and while Gretzky never used Trump’s name and was never asked about Trump’s tariffs and trade war or the 51st state comments, he answered this when asked if it registered with him that others attempt to use his name to further their agendas.

“I don’t worry about those kind of things because you can’t make everybody happy,” Gretzky said. “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. But trust me I have no pull or power with either the prime minister or the president.”

The Great One seemed to send a message that hockey is not about politics when he spoke about having his NHL career goals record broken by Ovechkin, a Russian player, adding that back during his playing days, he and his teammates never talked about politics.

“We watched basketball, we watched baseball, we talked about the Blue Jays, we talked about the New York Yankees,” Gretzky said. “Hockey players, that’s never on the docket. It’s just something that we stay in our lane. The prime minister and the president don’t tell us how to play hockey, and we don’t tell them how to do politics, right?”

Trump has said in the past that Gretzky should be Canada’s governor if the country becomes the 51st U.S. state, but when pressed about it, the Great One as generally declined to discuss politics, commenting instead:

“I always say to my kids — I’ve got five American kids, seven American grandchildren, an American wife, a 103-year-old American mother-in-law, and I always tell them every day that you be as proud of the United States of America as I am to be a Canadian,” Gretzky said. “That’s what your grandfather would have wanted.”

Not sure if this will be an end to the backlash he’s been dealing with. Last month, the famed statue of Gretzky outside Rogers Center in Edmonton was vandalized in the most brutal way, getting smeared with feces all over the face of the legendary player.

Clearly, the anger in Canada has turned toward their once-untouchable hockey hero, who has been called “Traitor,” “MAGA junkie,” and “sell-out” on social media. His wife Janet Jones Gretzky recently revealed that her husband is heartbroken by the recent backlash he has received, writing on Instagram that “it has broken (Wayne’s) heart to read and see the mean comments.”