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CNN’s Audie Cornish and New York Magazine contributing editor Will Leitch floated the idea during a podcast episode last month that the United States would be the “global villain” at the 2026 Winter Olympic Games.
Leitch joined Cornish for her podcast, “The Assignment,” on Jan. 22, and discussed an article that Leitch wrote in March 2025, headlined, “The United States Is Becoming a Global Sports Supervillain.”
The article cited multiple occasions in which the American national anthem was booed at Canadian sporting events. Leitch noted the booing during the conversation with Cornish, and said that Russia had been basically banned from the world stage, because of their invasion of Ukraine.
“I kind of posited the idea that, like is there a time where the U.S., if things continue on the way they’re going, they start to become kind of the pariah on the global sports stage the way that Russia has,” Leitch said.
Snow falls on the Olympic Rings at night ahead of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics on Feb. 4, 2026, in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. (Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)
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Cornish described the idea as the U.S. becoming a “global villain.”
“I really like that term because, so much of international sporting events, they’re just storytelling, right? Because they’re trying to get you interested if you are a person who doesn’t care about that particular sport. It’s like you don’t care that much about judo. Sorry, judo, plenty of people do. But if you don’t, there might be an athlete who has a backstory. That’s very dramatic, and you’re going to get involved in all the storylines of it. And I think that’s why I was so interested, because you and I are roughly the same age. And I feel like we were raised on a story that was Russia is the villain, like ‘Rocky’ movies,” she said.
Leitch then added, “The United States is very much this. They’re the bad guys pretty much across the board right now.”
Olympic rings in front of the USA’s accommodation in the Olympic Village in Milan on Feb. 3, 2026. (Peter Kneffel/picture alliance via Getty Images)
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Cornish then wondered if it was “official,” and said she thought of Leitch’s article when Trump arrived in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum.
Leitch said that Russia had become a pariah in global sports, as the country’s athletes are considered Individual Neutral Athletes (ANIs), according to NBC News, and none will compete under the country’s flag. He suggested that if the U.S. invaded Greenland, the same thing could happen.
In his March 2025 article about the U.S. becoming a “global sports supervillain,” Leitch wrote, “The United States is turning away from the world. The world, however begrudgingly, is starting to do the same to the United States. Are we ready to be the bad guys? Like, really the bad guys?”
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President Donald Trump arrives to speak about the economy at a rally Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026, in Clive, Iowa. (Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo)
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