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| Donald Trump has the best seats in the house (NBC) |
Sunday night's Freedom 250 fight card on the South Lawn of the White House showed that Donald Trump still can count on his moneyed allies to pitch in cash for purposes of creating a spectacle. But vacant seats -- prevalent both in sections reserved for celebrities and in sections set aside for everyday Americans --were a sign that Trump's drawing power isn't what it used to be. That is the chief take-home message from an event that might have been more at home in a sports venue like New York's Madison Square Garden rather than having the iconic home of American political power serving as a backdrop. It also might have helped if Americans had not been facing price shocks at gasoline pumps and in grocery stores, forcing Trump's approval ratings to record lows, according to a report at Variety. Under the headline "With UFC Freedom 250 at the White House, Trump has reached peak 'Idiocracy'," Marlow Stern writes:
At no point has the Trump presidency more closely resembled a scene out of “Idiocracy,” Mike Judge’s 2006 satire about a Philistine society that abhors intellectualism, than on Sunday night, as the White House played host to UFC Freedom 250 — a series of MMA brawls on the South Lawn ostensibly meant to commemorate the 250th birthday of America, but really to honor the 80th birthday of President Donald J. Trump, a man whose thirst for adulation and public spectacle will never be quenched.
The garish ceremony was broadcast live on Paramount+, a streaming platform owned by David Ellison, a Trump loyalist who’s been reshaping CBS News to be more MAGA-friendly. Just days before the event, Trump’s Justice Department formally approved Paramount Skydance’s $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. Trump, for his part, reportedly purchased between $15,000 and $50,000 worth of stock in TKO Holding Group, the UFC’s parent company, just a couple of weeks after the UFC Freedom 250 lineup dropped.
The opening moments of the event were fitting for an administration that seems to be driven more by bombast and theatrics than any genuine interest in policy. Stern writes:
After an opening sequence where memorable UFC fights were projected onto the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and various monuments around Washington, D.C — including Conor McGregor, a man found liable for rape, raising his gloves in triumph against the Washington Monument — we were treated to… a half-hour rain delay. At around 8:30 p.m. EST, things finally kicked off with Trump and UFC President Dana White slowly ambling out of the White House and toward The Claw, an 80-foot-tall tarantula-like canopy hovering over the octagon on the South Lawn. During this seemingly interminable walk, ads for Trump-related products like Trump Coins, Truth Social and World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto coin gambit, served as event sponsors.
“I have seen some surreal things in my life,” offered UFC commentator Joe Rogan. “This is the most surreal.”
I’m not sure if it was more surreal than seeing a violent mob of thousands of Trump supporters lay siege to the Capitol, with some smearing their own feces on its walls, on Jan. 6, but it was more bizarre than the last time Trump transformed the White House into a giant ad in order to return the favor to one of his prominent supporters.
The historic event was broadcast exclusively on Paramount+. Streaming viewership numbers have not been officially published, but total global viewership may be released by Paramount Skydance or the UFC in the coming days, according to a report at The New York Times. Those numbers might prove to be substantial, but the empty seats that could be readily seen around "the Octagon" and elsewhere on the White House grounds indicate the number of fans who chose to watch the event in person was so-so, at best. From the Variety report:
The UFC is said to have footed the entire $60-million bill for UFC Freedom 250, with White viewing it mainly as a promotional play. Of the estimated 4,300 seats, TMZ reported that 1,000 tickets were given to Trump, 200 were controlled by White, and 200 were for TKO Group Holdings CEO Ari Emanuel, while the rest were given to members of the military. Another 85,000 tickets were doled out to fans who could watch the event on giant screens from The Ellipse. Various reports, however, claimed that sponsorship packages, including ringside seats, were selling for between $1 million to $1.5 million.
A number of those seats surrounding the Octagon appeared to be empty by fight time, while The Ellipse looked far from capacity. The biggest non-Trump celebrity in attendance was probably Mark Zuckerberg, whose company Meta showered the telecast with ads. With President Trump’s approval rating at historic lows, it seems the showman doesn’t have the pull he once did. It also was odd how Trump milked the military for his 80th birthday event, with cameras often cutting to shots of service members in the crowd, and historical scenes of American heroism on the battlefield aired between fights. This is a man who, according to his own lawyer, invented an injury to dodge the draft during the Vietnam War, and who reportedly called fallen American soldiers “losers” and “suckers” for getting killed.
Perhaps more than anything, the event seemed designed as an opportunity to heap praise on Trump and put him at center stage. Dana White seemed plenty willing to do his part, Stern writes:
Trump, White and the UFC have a bit of history. White served as a Trump surrogate during his three presidential campaigns, and gave some insight into their allyship at the 2016 Republican National Convention. “Arenas around the world refused to host our events,” White told the crowd. “Nobody took us seriously. Nobody. Except Donald Trump… I will always be so grateful to him for standing with us in those early days, so tonight I stand with Donald Trump.”
Yes, White has repeatedly painted Trump as the UFC’s savior, a counterpoint to detractors like the late John McCain, who famously branded it “human cockfighting.” That version of events has been called into question by UFC insiders, according to a recent investigation in Vanity Fair, who claim that this mythmaking surrounding Trump and UFC began around 2016. Ant Evans, the former head of UFC PR agreed, writing on Twitter, “Former head of UFC PR here. Trump’s name didn’t appear in a single press release, one-sheet briefing, talking point, UFC-produced document, book, or piece of content before 2016. The only time I recall his name being mentioned within my own earshot was execs laughing about his involvement with the money-pit that was Affliction MMA. This narrative is simply false.”
Another outrageous narrative came courtesy of Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who, while promoting his boss’s birthday event, compared Dana White’s founding of the UFC to America putting a man on the moon.
As for the actual fights, they almost became an afterthought as the night wore on -- even though they produced plenty of action, and a fair amount of blood, and the event attracted some of the bigger names in mixed martial arts. Stern writes:
The fights themselves, of which there were seven, were secondary to venerating Trump. Michael Chandler got whooped again (surprise!) by Mauricio Ruffy, who proposed to his gal after (Chandler has now lost six of his last seven fights). Sean O’Malley knocked out Aiemann Zahabi with a straight-left and overhand-right, likely granting him a title shot, before saluting the troops; Cyril Gane made mincemeat of Alex “Chama” Pereira, who was a step slower since moving up to heavyweight; and Justin Gaethje pounded Ilia Topuria’s face in to hand him his first loss and capture the lightweight title. The unreasonably-long event ended well after 1 a.m. EST..
But it was Josh Hokit’s absurd antics that perfectly encapsulated UFC Freedom 250: After earning jeers for fake-vomiting at his weigh-in, the heavyweight bruiser beat the living daylights out of an out-of-shape Derrick Lewis, then gifted Trump a medallion and announced, “Michelle Obama is a man! Am I right, America?” to cheers from the crowd -- and an apparent smirk from Trump.
More than anything, though, UFC Freedom 250 was a vulgar display of power by President Trump, who views America as one giant sandbox filled with toys for him to play with. Though his Freedom 250 Concert imploded, you can expect plenty more embarrassing stunts to come.
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