Culturally, it’s been a tough few months for Donald Trump. The UFC night he held at the White House for his birthday got lost amid the froth and excitement of the World Cup. The Great American State Fair on the Washington DC National Mall was a dud. The president’s jokes at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner all bombed. Could the Patriot Games, a nationwide competition to find the American schaoolchildren most adept at traversing a set of monkey bars, help rescue the summer?
Last night we got our answer: no. A one-hour prime-time special brought us the best of the Patriot Games, and in a crowded field it managed to offer some of the most leaden TV of the American semiquincentennial. Freedom 250, the White House-backed non-profit that hosted the UFC fight at the White House and the Great American State Fair, produced the event, and put up the $125,000 in college scholarship winnings that went to each winner on the boys’ and girls’ side of the competition. The final round of the Games actually took place earlier this week, at a sports training facility outside Cleveland, Ohio. Last night we just got the best bits, and judging by what that amounted to, we should all be thankful we never had to endure the other bits. This was Trumpworld’s answer to the Hunger Games, but it’s unlikely there will be much clamor for a sequel. The patriots may be hungry for more, but the rest of us? Eh.
The climax of this hour-long trudge was its final quarter, in which the four most athletically talented schoolchildren in the (Maga-aligned) nation faced off to see who could negotiate the “Patriot Course”, a gladiatorial obstacle course featuring ropes, hoops, kettle bells, something called “the freedom gate”, the monkey bars of “American traverse”, and a final climb up “patriot’s peak”, fastest. But to get there ABC put us through 45 minutes of highlights from the Games’ qualifying rounds, a test of spectator endurance every bit as trying as anything inflicted on the competition’s collection of awkward 15-year-olds. To a soundtrack of rap-rock and screeching eagles, we watched as various high schoolers – “one male and one female from every state and some tribal nations and territories”, as the broadcast put it, and almost all of them white – tested themselves on the medicine ball toss, the agility shuttle, the 55m hurdles, and the flexed arm hang. “What a way to start!” exclaimed co-host Matt Barrie as various gawky teens shuffled and huffed before a sparse crowd of other teenagers. “84.72 for Bridget,” added, without context, his on-air colleague Laura Rutledge.
The kids next had to prove themselves in various dork sports (my term) – dodgeball, kickball, and the like. Then came the Varsity Circuit (please respect the capital letters), Operation Endurance Course (“You like to see these different athletes step up and crush the monkey bars”), and the tug of war, a contest so powerfully traditional it resisted upper-case Trumpification. Finally: Victory Hoops, an arcade-style basketball shootout game. “It’s been one of the best experiences of my life,” announced a young woman over slow-motion footage of her shooting a miniature basketball at a hoop three feet away. From the living rooms of red America, you could almost hear the sigh of relief that greeted these words: the kids are alright.
And finally, at the end of all that, it was on to the main event: an interview with the president himself! “Coming up, a conversation with President Donald J Trump,” Rutledge announced, over footage of Trump ~~Hitler saluting~~ waving to a crowd of smiling young patriots. Flanked by ESPN talk-show host Pat McAfee, who then promptly disappeared from the broadcast, the big dog entered the arena – a dark coliseum lit up by neon lights and sparklers to resemble a drone racing course – to approach his own test of agility: a two-minute interview with Rutledge in which she asked, “How have you found the Patriot Games?” The president paused. A hush descended on the crowd. “Well I love Ohio,” he responded. The crowd erupted. Patriotism in action! And then came the Trumpian coup de grâce. “This has been as exciting as anything, I got here and I didn’t know what to expect,” he added, taking a snide little dig at a competition his own administration created.
The finals, in the end, were a disappointment: both winners, Kennadi Fuhrman and Rockwell Myers (even the names at the Patriot Games had to project a powerful air of all-American excellence), strolled to victory after their opponents fell while attempting to cross American traverse. No matter what happens from here – to Trump, to America, to the world – we now all know to never, ever underestimate American traverse. On the victory dais, the final patriots thanked God, Trump presented them with their trophies (small, probably bought off Temu) and their checks (big, $125,000). The winners celebrated as the president smiled and clapped and pointed at no one in particular, and this hour of endurance, agility, strength, and dime-store Maga theatrics came to an abrupt end.
It was all very Hitler Youth. But as a TV spectacle, these Patriot Games did have one virtue that set them apart from the endless flotsam of 250th birthday kitsch that has crammed our screens this summer: they were, at the very least, brief.