Olympic Figure Skater Adam Rippon: 'My Mom Would Kick My A**' If I Talked Like Trump

Adam Rippon may be headed to the Olympics, but there’s one aspect of the gig he won’t be participating in. 

The 28-year-old figure skater, who on Jan. 7 became the first openly gay man to qualify for the Winter Games, has no plans to visit the White House, as Team USA members have traditionally done after the Olympics. 

“I won’t go because I don’t think somebody like me would be welcome there,” Rippon, a native of Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania, told the BBC. “I know what it’s like to go into a room and feel like you’re not wanted there.” 

As an Olympic athlete, Rippon sees it as his “duty” to be a role model. Accepting an invitation from President Donald Trump, who ran on an anti-LGBTQ platform, would be disingenuous, he said. 

“I think it’s really important that we stand up for what we believe in, and we speak out against things that we think are wrong and unjust,” he said. 

He added, “If I talked to people the way that President Trump talks to people, my mom would kick my ass.”

Rippon isn’t the only U.S. athlete who has vowed to decline a post-Olympics invitation to the White House. Freeskier Gus Kenworthy, who will find out later this month if he’s made the U.S. ski team, told Time magazine that he would also opt out, noting that he has “no interest in faking support” for the president.

Lindsey Vonn, who is also hoping to qualify for the U.S. ski team, similarly said she would not go if invited to the White House. 

“I hope to represent the people of the United States, not the president,” she told CNN last month. “I want to represent our country well, and I don’t think there are a lot of people currently in our government that do that.”