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CNN: Christian Schools Are Manchurian Candidate Mills to Take Over Government
During Friday’s The Situation Room, CNN co-anchor Pamela Brown continued her crusade against religious Christian schools ahead of the release of her anti-Christian documentary over the weekend. Despite claiming all week that she was supposedly investigating “Christian nationalism,” Friday’s tease was the first time politics was overtly discussed with any of the people she interviewed. Brown’s premise during this particular tease was that these schools were part of a cabal pumping out students to one-day fill government positions.
Brown didn’t hide the fact that she was targeting Classical Christian Schools because Secretary of War Pete Hegseth had enrolled his own kids into the program, and she was shocked that a religiously Christian school taught through the prism of their religion:
Hegseth is the most high profile member of a church network that doesn't shy away from Christian nationalist ambitions, and education is a key part of its mission. Today, more and more schools in that network are teaching kids everything from a biblical perspective.
At various points in the tease, Brown shared chopped up soundbites of an interview she did with David Goodwin, the president of the Association of Classical Christian Schools, where she pestered him about how their Christian beliefs were suffused throughout their curriculum.
CNN's Pamela Brown continued to bash Christian schools during Friday's The Situation Room. She tried to paint people who went/are attending Christian schools as something akin to Manchurian candidates pumped out by the schools with aims to fill positions of power in the U.S. and… pic.twitter.com/QtDNemUlVR
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) February 20, 2026
It was clear that Brown was fishing for an angle that would allow her to twist, reframe, and present a false depiction of the association’s motives for existing. In a series of questions, Brown slowly painted a picture of a Christian cabal with ties to the Trump administration trying to take over the government:
BROWN: So are these classical Christian schools a vehicle to create a more Christian world?
GOODWIN: Yes, that's - that's our purpose; is Christian civilization.
BROWN: What do you hope the graduates will go out and do in America?
GOODWIN: Live faithfully wherever - wherever they are.
BROWN: But you would like to see them in positions of power naturally.
GOODWIN: [Shrugs] We're glad when they get there.
BROWN (Voiceover): And Classical Christian Schools already have some powerful advocates like Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
Let’s breakdown the ridiculousness of Brown’s questions and how they progressed.
Whether a religious school program was Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, it’s obvious they would instill their world view into their students; and of course, they would want them to go out into the world and like their faith. Heck, wokeism was the religious worldview liberal wanted taught in secular schools.
Brown’s question regarding if the administrator would be happy seeing a student in a position of power was particularly ridiculous because ‘yes’ was the answer any administrator in any school anywhere would say. It didn’t matter if the school was public, private, charter, religious, or a homeschool program, the administrators and teachers would be happy for their students’ achievements. But she immediately brought up Hegseth because he served as her evidence of a sinister plot.
If that wasn’t clear enough, Brown wrapped the segment by proclaiming there was a secret web of connections and teased she would unravel them with the full “documentary”:
[W]e talked about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. He has written about how he and his wife actually moved to Tennessee before he took on this role, obviously, to put their children in a Classical Christian School Network. David Goodwin, who you heard there actually wrote a piece with, wrote a book with Pete Hegseth on education. He runs that association. You can start to see all these figures and ideologies are connected something I explore closely in my upcoming documentary, The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper.
Given how the rest of her teases went, the “documentary” would likely up to just a smear job.
The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:
CNN’s The Situation Room
February 20, 2026
11:46:45 a.m. Eastern
SECRETARY OF WAR PETE HEGSETH: As long as I have breath, I commit to you that I and we should never allow any group, no matter how large or small, to silence us from speaking the capital-T truth. Christ is king. He died for our sins. We are forgiven.
[Cuts to live]
PAMELA BROWN: That was part of Defense Secretary Pete speech to religious broadcasters last night. He also railed against what he called the ‘godless left’ and praised western Christian values. Hegseth is the most high profile member of a church network that doesn't shy away from Christian nationalist ambitions, and education is a key part of its mission. Today, more and more schools in that network are teaching kids everything from a biblical perspective.
[Cuts to video]
(…)
11:52:22 a.m. Eastern
BROWN: So are these classical Christian schools a vehicle to create a more Christian world?
DAVID GOODWIN (Association of Classical Christian Schools, president): Yes, that's - that's our purpose; is Christian civilization.
BROWN: What do you hope the graduates will go out and do in America?
GOODWIN: Live faithfully wherever - wherever they are.
BROWN: But you would like to see them in positions of power naturally.
GOODWIN: [Shrugs] We're glad when they get there.
BROWN (Voiceover): And Classical Christian Schools already have some powerful advocates like Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
(...)
11:53:00 a.m. Eastern
BROWN: Goodwin and Hegseth coauthored a book about what they characterize as the decline of public schools.
(...)
11:55:05 a.m. Eastern
BROWN: So are you happy with what's happening at the Department of Education being dismantled?
GOODWIN: Um. Yes. I mean, moderately happy because I think it was not that consequential of a department to begin with. But it's good -
BROWN (interrupting): But this is - But for all intents and purposes, this is what you want to see. The dismantling of the Department of Education and ultimately getting rid of public schools.
GOODWIN: Yes.
[Cuts back to live]
BROWN: And Wolf, you know, we talked about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. He has written about how he and his wife actually moved to Tennessee before he took on this role, obviously, to put their children in a Classical Christian School Network. David Goodwin, who you heard there actually wrote a piece with, wrote a book with Pete Hegseth on education. He runs that association. You can start to see all these figures and ideologies are connected something I explore closely in my upcoming documentary, The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper.
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