President Donald Trump’s inaugural Patriot Games ended Tuesday with two teenage athletes receiving $125,000 scholarships, more than 100 young competitors wearing medals and a crowd chanting “USA.”
Naturally, CNN looked at this celebration of athleticism and national pride and asked the most urgent question of our time:
Why do so many of these teenagers appear to be white? CNN host Audie Cornish presented the network’s racial analysis Wednesday morning after Kansas athlete Kennadi Fuhrman and Utah’s Rockwell Myers were crowned the first male and female Patriot Games champions.
“Two winners now crowned in President Trump’s Patriot Games,” Cornish began. “The president promised the best of the best student athletes. I’m not sure that’s what we got.”
That was quite an opening. The teenagers had barely removed their medals before CNN questioned whether they deserved to be there.
Cornish continued:
“A CNN analysis actually found that a specific demographic of kids got a shot to compete.”
But CNN’s analysis apparently did not cover every competitor. It examined the students featured on Freedom 250’s Instagram page.
“Of the ones who were featured in the Freedom 250 Instagram page, many attend private Christian schools,” Cornish said. “They also appear to be overwhelmingly white, and the application for the games didn’t specify race.”
There is a lot packed into that sentence—and considerably more missing from it.
Cornish did not explain how CNN classified the athletes by race, how many Instagram profiles it examined, whether those posts represented the entire field or what percentage supposedly qualified as “overwhelmingly white.”
The careful word “appear” suggests CNN’s researchers made their determinations by inspecting photographs.
That is an interesting journalistic standard. Americans are routinely warned not to assume someone’s race, ethnicity or identity based upon appearance—unless CNN is auditing a Trump-sponsored athletic contest, apparently.
The network also acknowledged that the application did not ask about race.
CNN seemingly considered it suspicious that organizers did not track racial information. Others might regard a race-blind application as precisely what equal treatment is supposed to look like.
No publicly available evidence presented by CNN showed that organizers excluded applicants because of race or instructed selectors to favor white or Christian students.
The Patriot Games were open to student-athletes between 14 and 17. Applicants submitted eligibility information and a short video describing their athletic accomplishments, personal story and leadership qualities.
The competition included representatives from all 50 states, American territories and tribal nations. Organizers said they sought well-rounded athletes capable of demonstrating strength, endurance, agility, teamwork and perseverance.
The Freedom 250 event description does not list race or religion among its selection requirements.
Competitors participated in a Presidential Fitness Test, a military-inspired boot-camp circuit, an obstacle course and team contests including kickball, dodgeball, tug-of-war and basketball-based “Victory Hoops.”
If CNN has evidence that a faster, stronger or more accomplished applicant was rejected because of race, it should publish that evidence.
After unveiling its analysis, CNN played social-media videos attacking the event.
“These are supposedly the best athletes from every state in the country, and they all happen to be white?” one TikTok user asked.
They did not all “happen to be white,” at least not according to any complete demographic accounting presented in the segment. CNN said athletes featured on one Instagram page “appear” overwhelmingly white.
Another TikTok critic described the event as “The Dystopian Hunger Games.”
That comparison has followed the competition since Trump announced it. The principal difference—besides the absence of authoritarian child sacrifice—is that participation was voluntary, the teenagers played kickball and the champions received college scholarships instead of escaping with their lives.
Actor Dean Cain previously mocked the comparison.
“We’re not going to kill anybody,” Cain said. “People are actually asking to be there. We don’t ask for tribute.”
Details, details.
Trump attended Tuesday night’s finale at SPIRE Academy in Geneva, Ohio, alongside ESPN host and former NFL punter Pat McAfee.
The president presented Fuhrman and Myers with golden trophies and scholarships worth $125,000 apiece.
“The crowd chanted ‘USA,’ while individuals yelled ‘I love you, Mr. President’ and ‘2028!’ throughout the night,” the Akron Beacon Journal reported. “Trump often smiled.”
McAfee enthusiastically promoted the competition and hinted that another edition could follow.
“Cheers to the incredible contestants and to next year’s Patriot Games,” he wrote, although organizers have not officially announced a 2027 event.
ESPN streamed the three-day competition through its app. A one-hour national highlights program is scheduled to air Thursday at 9 p.m. Eastern on ABC.
Yes, the Disney-owned network is broadcasting the allegedly dystopian spectacle. Apparently the Hunger Games become less terrifying when they fill an hour of primetime inventory.
CNN also emphasized that many of the profiled competitors attend private Christian schools.
Again, Cornish supplied no denominator. “Many” could mean ten, thirty or half the field. Nor did the segment establish how those numbers compared with the applicant pool.
Private-school and homeschooled students may have been more likely to learn about the new competition, obtain help producing application videos or have schedules flexible enough to travel to Ohio. Public-school athletic associations may have promoted the application unevenly across states.
Those are possible explanations—not established facts.
A credible analysis would compare applicants with selected competitors, examine selection scores and determine whether similarly situated students received different treatment. CNN apparently compared Instagram faces.
The athletes deserved better than this. The Patriot Games were a first-year event organized on a compressed schedule. Scrutiny of its selection process, financing, safety procedures and scholarship administration is entirely appropriate.
But the athletes themselves are minors who applied, were selected and competed.
Cornish’s declaration—“I’m not sure that’s what we got”—suggested these teenagers may not have been the “best of the best” immediately before she discussed their apparent race and religious-school backgrounds.
That is an ugly implication unsupported by the evidence described on air.
Perhaps Freedom 250 should provide greater transparency before staging another competition. It would help answer serious questions and prevent every criticism from being dismissed as partisan hostility.
CNN should provide some transparency, too. How many athletes did it study? Who decided their racial classifications? How many attended Christian schools? Did its sample include the entire field? And what evidence connected either characteristic to the selection decision?
Until those questions are answered, CNN did not uncover a racial scandal.
It looked at photographs of teenage athletes and found another excuse to talk about Donald Trump and white people.
WIRE SOURCES
- CNN calls Trump’s Patriot Games “overwhelmingly white”
- Freedom 250: Official Patriot Games event and competition details
- Trump awards two Patriot Games champions $125,000 scholarships
- Pat McAfee joins Trump for the Patriot Games finale
- Inside Trump’s inaugural Patriot Games competition
- Defense Department schools announce Patriot Games application requirements
