Unfortunately, we do need to know there was a UFC fight at the White House
Today I want to talk about something less high-minded.
Hi all --
So a few days ago I took a more high-minded approach to our current catastrophe. People throw the word "illegal" around to instantly dehumanize others, and this is tied to copaganda, racism, and fear of anything unfamiliar. But I also think it is tied to how we attach ourselves to the law. We may be able to say here and there that what is legal isn't always right, but there's a way we feel the law defines us which is all-encompassing. The consequences are stark: we're wedded to procedures even as suffering and death multiply around us.
Today I want to talk about something less high-minded. This weekend, there was a UFC fight on the White House lawn. I very much appreciate the coverage of Ryan Broderick and everyone at Garbage Day, because it is too easy to dismiss a sloppy, ill-conceived event connected to a President who says and does anything for attention. Some will mock anyone interested in this topic as too obsessed with decorum, unable to focus on how power actually works. Others think giving the President more attention, good or bad, is itself a trap.
My own thought is that we should look for serious questions. A question on my mind is "How did this happen so quickly? How did we move in a few years from The West Wing to posing with 'booth babes' on the White House lawn?" You'll recall that the President once had a large McDonald's spread for a team he was scheduled to greet. That certainly was tacky, mistaken, and condescending, but I don't know that even that signaled the UFC taking over the grounds of the White House and Lincoln Memorial.
Below, I've linked to an Instagram Reel from Garbage Day and a YouTube video they made about the 2 day event. I'll be talking about the reel primarily because that is especially revealing. Broderick himself had an incredibly thoughtful take on the whole situation and I encourage you read his newsletter: "My horrible, no good weekend at the UFC White House fight."
You may not be able to click through to see Garbage Day's Instagram Reel describing the activities of the first day at the White House, so I'll write out what's in their report.
- If you wanted to buy a shirt commemorating a fight on the White House lawn, you could pay $120.
- TSA ran the security line to get into the White House grounds.
- A giant screen showed the same ads over and over again. Broderick mentions Trump Bucks, crypto, the Air Force, and one for TPUSA featuring Charlie Kirk.
- You could buy drinks, too, one of which was a "Vodka Jalapeno Slam" (tbh, I would down this).
- There was an area where they were "revving cars all day" blowing tons of smoke and dirt into people's faces.
- Monster Energy was a sponsor of much of the event. Men who wanted a photo with the "booth babes" formed a "massive line."
- Meta was there, too, for those of you taking notes on who is paying what to the President or his enterprises.
- Broderick emphasizes that Joe Rogan, who appeared on stage, is a tiny dude.
OK. You're asking what all this means. And you know we've got people who are just gonna say "so something crappy happened at the White House. So what? Get a life." But let's be clear: even though a number of people Broderick interviewed said they were just there for the fight, we know the truth. If politicians are going out of their way to cater to you, you don't have to admit what your political preferences are. I've linked to a paper on the impact of the Joe Rogan Experience on the 2024 election.
So the aesthetics matter. From what I can gather, the vibe isn't too different from sitting at home, watching random videos, letting even more random ads swarm you for hours. Yeah, it's a UFC event, but Monster Energy, Meta, Dodge, the Air Force, TPUSA could all easily advertise on any gaming stream or Mr. Beast imitator. I'm thinking that the mindlessness of all of this, a UFC fight on the President's birthday, implies 1) a not-so-coherent vision of a certain audience, a certain group of voters and 2) the President has no idea how to face his own mortality.
A few thoughts on both those things. First, the audience. In a way, being exposed to X and the various accounts with Roman statue avatars encourages us to believe that the manosphere and anything associated with it is a tight ideological bubble. This isn't necessarily true. Right-wing propagandists do a lot of work to lead their audience to extremism. It starts with "common sense," then turns into questioning vaccines and all of science, then eventually full on antisemitism and misogyny. This usually takes a bit of time, as we know from the flood of stories of how Fox News has destroyed entire families.
So it makes a certain sense that the White House lawn would be filled with things guys/bros like while a big screen touts Charlie Kirk and TPUSA. Just try anything, see if they like it, advertise your cause. Of course, Trumpism has been a political force for over a decade. If you're still grasping for what your audience likes, if you have all the money in the world to create propaganda for a two-term President who wants to serve more terms, how are things being done this terribly? Broderick says in his post that you can contrast the listlessness of these two days in D.C. with the Knicks winning the championship. New York's spontaneous, celebratory joy under a mayor who is a democratic socialist is one glimpse at a political future.
I should say Trumpism could be far from being a spent political force (then again, who knows. People have been known to turn on authorities suddenly). It has deep institutional control, plenty of ways to dominate media, and spawned a particular culture which is tough to combat. That culture: plenty of people think they can act like Trump–maximize attention, dare people to hold you accountable, trust that by trying to exert power over others that they'll back down and you'll impress someone. It's not a culture which translates well into events for families or fight fans looking for something to do on a Saturday afternoon. But it does lend itself to an affinity for UFC itself, the business of caged fighting.
My second thought is about the President himself. The resistlib accounts obsess with the terrible shape the President is in, and I'll admit I'm still thinking about how he appeared in public with such terrible swelling under his eyes. Maybe he'll live another 100 years–he does have access to the world's best treatments–but I've got to wonder what the hell he is thinking. Sure, he's been doing the UFC/wrestling thing for a while, making appearances at their events. And sure, he bought a bunch of stock in TKO, which owns UFC, while promoting the fight at the White House. You might be tempted to say that what we're seeing is a canny politician and businessman (one involved in insider trading, which is certainly a "high crime") try to make his birthday unforgettable.
I don't think he's thinking that deeply, though. He's running on instinct. He may not be dying, but he's acting like he's dying. And he has no idea what to do with himself. The ballroom, the reflecting pool, the illegal stock trades – this is the behavior of a real estate developer who wants to show off to all the other rich people that he's the King of New York. I believe that's the fight he's having in his head and he can't win. Long before Mamdani, long before the Presidency, NYC hated his guts. The working class there knew him as a slumlord and old money thought he was tasteless. There's a lesson for us who want to age gracefully here: instead of looking to have a cage fight in the backyard so people will love us, we can read a book. The incoherence and sloppiness of the UFC event came from the man himself, the man who declared the "poorly educated" to be key to his winning power. The man who has to guess at what they like because he does not know any better.