We Are Better Than This

On Sunday night, President Donald Trump brought the country to a new low. The question is whether the nation has finally bottomed out—and realizes it.

On the White House lawn, Trump hosted Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) mixed martial arts cage matches. Fighters attacked each other with their fists, feet, knees, and elbows. Blood spewed everywhere; that was the point.

It wasn’t boxing; the combatants wore gloves with much less padding. It wasn’t professional wrestling; the injuries inflicted were real. It was billed as a sporting event, but as commentators observed, it was really 21st-century cockfighting where the birds are human beings.

Follow the Money

The UFC said that private funding totaling $60 million paid for the event. But it’s not clear that any private money covered the monumental work of the hundreds of staff from seven federal government agencies, or the estimated $10 to $12 million in supplemental security that the District of Columbia incurred (to be reimbursed from federally appropriated funds for federal events).

Fighters used the Executive Office Building and rooms in the White House as locker rooms. If not sacrilegious, it was something close.

Beyond the abuse of taxpayers’ dollars, Trump’s profiteering was pervasive.

• “Ultimate Fighting Championship” is a promotional company owned and operated by TKO Group Holdings. Trump owns stock in TKO Group Holdings.

• A day before the fights, Trump’s super PAC MAGA, Inc. held a $1 million-a-plate fundraiser at Trump’s Virginia golf club.

• Trump sold a line of Trump-branded UFC medallions for hundreds and—in some cases—thousands of dollars.

• World Liberty Financial was an official sponsor of the event. It’s a Trump-family-created crypto company and issued the stablecoins that some fighters received as bonuses.

• Other corporate sponsors included Crypto.com (its name appeared on each step leading into the cage), Bud Light, Polymarket, Monster Energy, Starlink, EasyPost, and Stake.

• Paramount Skydance, the media company owned by Larry and David Ellison, who are friendly with Trump, live streamed the event (behind a paywall). A few days earlier, Trump’s Justice Department approved Paramount’s merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, thereby bringing CBS, CNN, Paramount+, HBO Max, and a vast film and television studio under David Ellison’s control.

In a post-fight interview, a UFC winner yelled: “Michelle Obama is a man. Am I right America?”

How Far We Have Fallen

Worse than the event itself and Trump’s profiteering is the fact that it happened on White House grounds. While construction was underway, Marine One—the presidential helicopter—could not land on the South Lawn, its usual location. Fighters used the Executive Office Building and rooms in the White House as locker rooms. If not sacrilegious, it was something close.

President Thomas Jefferson first opened the White House lawn in 1801 when he invited the US Marine Corps Band to perform. Since then, it has been the scene of children’s Easter Egg Rolls (begun by President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1878), a tennis court (President Theodore Roosevelt in 1902), a performing arts venue (President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965), Willie Nelson’s performance (President Jimmy Carter in 1980), the Beach Boys’ South Lawn Beach Party (President Ronald Reagan in 1983), youth T-ball games (President George H.W. Bush in 2001), and a collaborative arts festival (President Barack Obama in 2016).

The good news is that a recent Reuters poll revealed that only 16% of Americans—including one-third of Republicans—said that holding UFC events on the White House lawn was appropriate.

Determined to make his mark, Trump did not care that it would be an ugly blemish on White House history—or another reflection of how far the nation has descended into Trump’s abyss.