Collins' President Snow, a fictional villain, somehow has a more tasteful, less gold-drenched office than Trump.Murray Close/Getty
It’s not a secret that Donald Trump has taken inspiration from several famous authoritarians of both the past and the present. Vladimir Putin, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and Xi Jinping, all of whom the president has openly praised, have shaped Trump’s leadership style in one way or another.
But I really didn’t think that The Hunger Games’ President Coriolanus Snow, leader of the fictional country of Panem, would eventually find his way onto that list.
In a video announcement Thursday, Trump declared that, to ring in the United States’ 250th birthday, the nation will host the first-ever “Patriot Games,” an “unprecedented four-day athletic event” featuring high school athletes, one boy and one girl, from each state and territory.
He also made sure to add in a dash of his signature transphobia: “But I promise there will be no men playing in women’s sports. You’re not going to see that.”
Now, if you think this sounds just like Suzanne Collins’ hit young adult novels, you’re not alone. All across social media, people are drawing comparisons between the dystopian young adult book series and the president’s latest bit of American pageantry.
The games, will be hosted by Freedom250, a newly established subsidiary of the National Park Foundation, as part of a wider Trumpian 250th anniversary extravaganza, to include a prayer event at the National Mall—meant to “rededicate our country as one nation under God”—and the debut of an “Arc de Trump,” a landmark designed to resemble France’s Arc de Triomphe, only bigger.
I’m assuming that there will be no killing in Trump’s “Patriot Games,” but I guess we’ll have to wait until fall to see.
Relatedly, the Trump-appointed board of Washington’s Kennedy Center just voted to rename the famed theater the “Trump-Kennedy Center,” according to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
With health care premiums on the verge of skyrocketing, unemployment rates rising, and the Trump administration still rapidly slashing social safety nets, I can’t imagine that any of the president’s passion projects are going to help his dwindling ratings.
