ESPN personality Pat McAfee, left, shakes hands with President Donald Trump during the Patriot Games held at Spire Academy, Aug. 11, 2026, in Geneva, Ohio. ESPN star Pat McAfee faced heavy criticism after he was seen meeting United States President Donald Trump at the first-ever Patriot Games and sitting next to him during the event. McAfee addressed the criticism on Wednesday, explaining why he decided to attend the event and adding that Trump was “very gracious” to him and one of his crew members, Gumpy. “There’s a lot of people upset. Any time you have the president doing anything – especially President Trump, who was very gracious to me and Gumpy, I would say,” McAfee said. “But the mission of the Patriot Games, I am a firm believer, and I’m not the only one. And I am very excited for what the future is.” “I guess he thinks we’re stupid.” Journalist Van Lathan and media personality Rachel Lindsay had very strong feelings about McAfee’s response. “Pat McAfee, I, I guess he thinks we’re stupid, or that he thinks he’s smarter than us,” Lindsay said in a recent podcast. “I just like, either he’s a blithering idiot and doesn’t see that being a part of the Patriot Games— Donnie just said who put it on and what it’s about— he either doesn’t see that, or he doesn’t see it because he actually believes in every single thing that the Patriot Games represents. “When he was on his show after the games, and he is confronting the criticism for him walking in with Trump and being there and supporting it. He’s like, ‘I just care about athletics and our youth and encouraging them to be active. And this game, these games, this was so cool. It brought people representing their states across throughout this country who were excited about sports. And I’m all about supporting athletics. I have a child. I want to see them involved in it. I’m an athlete.’ “Like, that’s how he talks to us. And it’s like this whole game was something to center and praise Trump. It was— Trump’s name was everywhere. People being interviewed were talking about, thank God for Trump. We love Trump. Trump walked out to chants.”
Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay go off Pat McAfee for being a coward and not just letting people know he’s maga and he supports Donald trump and the right wing agenda they are pushing pic.twitter.com/m33DRbjjP3 — NBA Hoops (@Thechat101) August 14, 2026
“These things are an agenda.” Lindsay also spoke on the athletes that were chosen to compete in the games. “This was a 90% group of white kids who were chosen not based just on their athleticism and brought up the great athletes across the— young athletes across the country,” she said. “They had to submit a video explaining what it is to be a Patriot. That was very much so about it. It was all— they also had to write down, identify themselves based on their biological, or how they were born biologically. Both of these things are an agenda. “Also, a lot of them were talking about their Christian faith. So this was to promote Trump, to promote a conservative agenda, agenda, to promote Christianity, to promote whiteness, all under the guise of we just really are about athletics and encouraging our youth to, um, really be involved in exercise and athleticism. And if that’s really the case, then maybe you wouldn’t want to dismantle the Department of Education, which may not be involved in setting the rules for games but is definitely involved in sports and athleticism on a federal level when it comes to funding and programs of such nature. Van Lathan went as far as to say that McAfee is afraid to come out publicly as a Trump supporter. “Pat McAfee wants to be MAGA so bad, he just won’t let it happen,” he said. “Pat McAfee wants to be desperately publicly MAGA. He wants to come out of the closet as MAGA. He wants to be down so badly, but he will only stick the tip in. And I wonder if he feels like he’s letting his ancestors down. Your ancestors kicked the shit out of people for a long time, so you didn’t have to hide the fact that you stand next to a racist and xenophobic political product.” Lathan then went on to trash the Patriot Games as a whole. “The most successful thing about the Patriot games is that they got Pat McAfee… The most successful thing about it is that, that they got somebody like him and ESPN to stand next to this product. No one else looking at this thinks this is anything other than direct propaganda from the Trump administration. But Pat McAfee, who desperately wants to be down, who desperately wants to get ‘attaboys’ from the president, who desperately wants to stand next to him and put his MAGA hat on and do the entire thing, for some reason, he doesn’t have the courage to do it.” Lindsey also called on McAfee to own his support for the controversial President. “The only thing missing is the red hat and the actual words: ‘I am MAGA, I do support Trump.’ But everything else that you’re showing us does that.” The post ‘He wants to come out of the closet as MAGA’: Pat McAfee gets ripped for ‘lacking the courage’ to support Donald Trump appeared first on The Comeback: Today’s Top Sports Stories & Reactions.