Donald Trump has said he has never had a drink in his life. His older brother, Fred Jr., died after struggling with alcoholism, a loss Trump has spoken about publicly and cited as the reason he stayed away from alcohol. He has said it shaped how he thinks about people who drink.
On Monday, during a White House Police Week dinner, Trump looked at his guests and delivered an assessment of his FBI director: “FBI Director Kash Patel. Does he get enough publicity? If you could get a little more publicity, it would be very…” He stopped. He chuckled.
The man who appointed Kash Patel to lead the FBI, and whose own family history makes alcohol anything but casual, turned Patel’s publicity problem into a joke. At a law enforcement dinner. In front of the people the bureau is supposed to reassure.
The Chuckle Had a Backstory
Patel has spent months becoming the wrong kind of famous.
In February, videos showed him in the Team USA men’s hockey locker room after the Olympic gold medal game in Milan, jumping, shouting, and drinking beer while cameras rolled. Patel defended the trip, saying he had been in Italy on official business and would reimburse any personal use of government resources.
That was only the warm-up. In April, The Atlantic published an investigation alleging excessive drinking and unexplained absences during Patel’s tenure. The story cited more than two dozen sources and alleged that meetings had been delayed, decisions slowed, and Patel had sometimes been unreachable. One of the sharpest allegations was that his security detail once sought breaching equipment because he could not be reached behind a locked door.
Patel denies all of it. He called the reporting false, sued The Atlantic and reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick for $250 million, and told senators this week, under oath, that the allegations were “unequivocally, categorically false.”
Then Trump reused the publicity line in public.
President Donald Trump told FBI Director Kash Patel he didn’t like his Olympics hijinks with the US men’s national team, per NBC.
— PuckEmpire (@puckempire) February 28, 2026
The Bureau Drama Did Not Stay Outside the Building
While Patel has been fighting the public story, the inside story has grown uglier.
Former acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll and two other former senior officials sued Patel and the Trump administration last year, alleging they were removed in a politically driven purge. Driscoll alleged that Patel said the White House wanted agents tied to Trump investigations gone, and that Patel’s own job depended on carrying that out. The lawsuit also described loyalty vetting, including questions about political views and voting history.
Those are allegations in litigation. Patel and the administration have contested the claims. However, this is now part of the public record around the FBI director.
Separately, Patel reportedly ordered polygraph tests for more than two dozen current and former staffers, including security detail and information-technology personnel, as part of an effort to identify leakers. An FBI spokesperson disputed parts of the reporting and defended Patel’s presence at operational meetings. Patel also denied at Tuesday’s Senate hearing that he personally ordered polygraphs to target press leaks.
Still, the pattern is not flattering. Lawsuits. Loyalty fights. Leak hunts. Senate denials. A director spending more time explaining his own conduct than projecting control over the bureau.
Then Came the Bourbon Bottle
The alcohol story got even stranger when The Atlantic reported that Patel gives out personalized Woodford Reserve bourbon bottles engraved with “Kash Patel FBI Director,” in his preferred “Ka$h” styling and featuring an FBI shield. The FBI did not dispute that the bottles exist, but said they are part of a long-running commemorative gift tradition and that Patel follows ethics rules and pays for personal gifts himself.
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee mocked the bottles online. Senator Dick Durbin had already called for Patel’s replacement following the earlier Atlantic report. By the time the bourbon became its own news cycle, Patel’s defenders were stuck arguing that the FBI director’s custom liquor was technically fine.
EXCLUSIVE: My latest story for @TheAtlantic: https://t.co/6Cp8XKVaqp
— Sarah Fitzpatrick (@S_Fitzpatrick) May 6, 2026
Maybe It Is. That Is Not the Point
The point is that Patel’s alcohol-related headlines are now sitting directly on top of one of Trump’s most personal public convictions. Trump has said Fred Jr.’s death helped teach him not to drink. Patel is denying allegations about excessive drinking, suing journalists over them, defending the Olympic beer video, and explaining personalized bourbon bottles.
Then the president publicly joked that Patel gets too much attention.
That is the part Patel cannot sue away.
At Police Week, Trump did not fire him. He did not defend him. He did something colder. He laughed.
Kash Patel can keep insisting the stories are false. He may even prove some of them wrong. But if the only boss who matters is already making him the punchline in public, how much confidence does the FBI director actually have left?