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.
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, that served as event sponsors.
