{"id":454,"date":"2026-06-17T10:42:59","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T10:42:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=454"},"modified":"2026-06-17T10:42:59","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T10:42:59","slug":"when-the-white-house-becomes-a-fight-club","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=454","title":{"rendered":"When the White House becomes a fight club"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Are you not entertained?<\/p>\n

None of this is normal. The longer we are stuck in this place, the longer it will take to escape.<\/p>\n

Read more Talarico super PAC wants to give GOP voters \u201cpermission to defect\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Last Sunday night, Flag Day, on the White House South Lawn, in a ring under a 600-ton, 92-foot-high steel structure called \u201cthe Claw\u201d \u2014 so bright it reportedly distracted pilots landing at Reagan National \u2014 an estimated 4,300 people (including 1,200 military servicemembers) watched mixed martial artists battle on a hot and humid night to commemorate America\u2019s 250th anniversary. More than 80,000 people had tickets to watch the event from the Ellipse.<\/p>\n

UFC Freedom 250 was a $60 million gift to President Donald Trump for his 80th birthday \u2014 or even more troubling still, a gift that Trump practically engineered for himself. In his mind, he is a king or a dictator. He is the State. His pleasures should be ours. Trump was enthralled. He now has his White House, his military parade, his ballroom, his great arch, his face and name on money and buildings, and his great gladiator battle.<\/p>\n

In the main event, Ilia Topuria and Justin Gaethje had one of the most thrilling fights in recent memory. It was stopped after the fourth round when Topuria could no longer continue \u2014 his face beaten nearly beyond recognition.<\/p>\n

British heavyweight boxer Tyson \u201cthe Gypsy King\u201d Fury \u2014 a grand showman like the president \u2014 made a surprise appearance, wearing a black suit studded with fake gemstones and a red and white \u201cTrump for Prime Minister\u201d hat.<\/p>\n

I came of age with UFC and MMA. I remember tipping the clerk at the local video store to \u201creserve\u201d the tapes \u2014 they were always stolen or otherwise \u201clost\u201d and never returned. My friends and I would rush home to find out if a sumo wrestler could beat a judo or kung fu master.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s UFC bears little resemblance to what the late Senator John McCain once dismissed as \u201chuman cockfighting.\u201d For the average person, MMA and UFC are now synonymous \u2014 the brand has achieved that kind of total market capture.<\/p>\n

\n

I am an American. I am a product of this culture and its worst excesses.\u00a0If you are not careful, it will swallow you whole.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

UFC Freedom 250 was a gloriously entertaining and bloody spectacle. One can be in awe of a thing and still be deeply troubled by it. As I watched Sunday\u2019s fights, I kept asking myself: how did we go from stolen VHS videotapes in the 1990s to all this?<\/p>\n

America is a profoundly violent country. There are more guns than people. The nation leads the world in mass shootings. As historian and cultural critic Richard Slotkin has argued, America\u2019s founding myths reflect what he has called \u201cregeneration through violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

As I watched Trump, Dana White, and the UFC fighters and other guests make their entrances through the White House, I kept texting a friend that \u201cwe are all in hell.\u201d Then, moments later, I would find myself yelling at the TV, cheering on the fighters. I am an American. I am a product of this culture and its worst excesses. If you are not careful, it will swallow you whole. That seduction is one of the main ways that the Age of Trump and American fascism came into being.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump is a professional wrestling \u201cheel\u201d \u2014 the villain. From professional wrestling, Trump learned to refine the character and persona, the promo and the showmanship, and how to manipulate the public\u2019s suspension of disbelief.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs this real or not?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know that is fake for sure. But that other thing? It absolutely happened!\u201d<\/p>\n

At its best, professional wrestling is a simulated fight that must look real.<\/p>\n

But it is the real violence of MMA and boxing that most purely distills Trump\u2019s strongman politics and authoritarian appeal. It is real violence and real domination with little to no room for weakness or empathy. Trump loves killers and ruthless aggression. Violence governs his theory of politics, society and human relationships. Violence is also the animating spirit of the larger MAGA and right-wing authoritarian project.<\/p>\n

Read more The coziest TV mysteries have a higher calling<\/a><\/p>\n

In that way, Trump\u2019s White House MMA birthday celebration was a spectacle: an event where political and social meaning and values are created, reinforced and circulated across a society.<\/p>\n

The special guests included crypto, media and tech billionaires \u2014 among them Mark Zuckerberg, whose company Meta has partnered with UFC, and David Ellison, whose company Paramount holds the exclusive broadcast rights.<\/p>\n

And of course, there was corruption. As Salon\u2019s Sophia Tesfaye extensively mapped out in a previous essay, the Trump family is selling \u201ccommemorative\u201d coins bearing the president\u2019s face, priced from $250 to $12,000. The fighters were partially paid in cryptocurrency from Trump\u2019s World Liberty Financial company. Corporations paid $1 million to sponsor the event.<\/p>\n

There was militant nationalism: flyovers by military jets, recruitment ads that showed Trump as a God-King and force of destiny and the military framed as America\u2019s most important institution and enforcer of national greatness.<\/p>\n

Coexisting with the amazing athletic skill, physical intelligence and grit, there was a type of insecure performative patriotic hypermasculinity. As Robert Reich has written, many Americans find Trump\u2019s neofascist \u201cstrongman\u201d attractive because they feel powerless and the cage match and other public displays of aggression help them to feel vicariously powerful.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, Trump turned the White House into his personal coliseum. The president is not (yet) Nero or Caligula. America is not Rome. But the spectacle of UFC Freedom 250 and an empire collapsing into bread and circuses (without the bread for the majority of Americans who are struggling to pay their bills) and a security state turning inward against its own people still echoed loudly \u2014 even if the ambition was not as grand as Rome\u2019s.<\/p>\n

As historian Heather Cox Richardson recently observed, one of Trump\u2019s darkest powers is his ability to \u201c[pervert] those things that Americans hold dear\u2026. It was almost as if he was saying I don\u2019t care what you hold sacred. I\u2019m going to use all of it for myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump has debased and gutted the presidency and torn down the American people\u2019s expectations of their leaders. Once these norms are broken, it will take decades \u2014 if not generations \u2014 to repair them.<\/p>\n

I have lost count of how many times during the long Age of Trump I have said aloud that if someone wrote down this story and tried to sell it, no publisher or studio would buy it. Too unbelievable. Hackwork. Grossly overwritten. Obvious.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the FBI announced it had stopped an alleged plot to use drones armed with explosives to attack buildings near the UFC Freedom 250 event. Snipers would then shoot the panicked crowd. A second group of attackers would breach the White House gates. Five people have been arrested. The investigation is ongoing.<\/p>\n

If the terrorist plot had succeeded, the tragedy would likely be used as a justification to invoke the Insurrection Act or declare a national emergency to restrict voting and other civil rights. To that point, the New York Times is reporting that the administration considered suspending the constitutional right of habeas corpus for undocumented immigrants to accelerate Trump\u2019s mass deportation campaign.<\/p>\n

Whoever is writing this story in real time, please make it stop. The American people \u2014 and the world \u2014 have had enough. Our expectations of normalcy were pummeled into submission long ago.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump\u2019s \u201cwhite working class\u201d base may finally have had enough<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A cage fight on the South Lawn helps us understand violence, politics and spectacle in the Age of Trump.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":453,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4,5,511],"class_list":["post-454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting","tag-commentary","tag-donald-trump","tag-ufc"],"yoast_head":"\nWhen the White House becomes a fight club - Relocation Across America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=454\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"When the White House becomes a fight club - Relocation Across America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A cage fight on the South Lawn helps us understand violence, politics and spectacle in the Age of Trump.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=454\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Relocation Across America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-17T10:42:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=454#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=454\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/ba2572fa1a7a241291fdc36bdae80fcf\"},\"headline\":\"When the White House becomes a fight club\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-17T10:42:59+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=454\"},\"wordCount\":1265,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=454#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/a076c102b51a70bc071614d077028438.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Commentary\",\"Donald Trump\",\"UFC\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Interesting\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=454#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=454\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=454\",\"name\":\"When the White House becomes a fight club - 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