Trump’s birthday cage match was even grosser than you think
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/6/15/800055938/whitehouse/trump-cage-match-grosser-than-you-think/
Trump’s birthday cage match was even grosser than you think
President Donald Trump’s birthday gift to himself, which included an Ultimate Fighting Championship extravaganza on the White House lawn, was as tacky as it gets—but don’t sleep on how disgusting it was too.
Let’s start with UFC head and Trump pal Dana White turning out his pockets and crying poor, whining about the high cost and logistical challenges.
“I can’t afford it,” said White, who is literally worth more than $600 million.
White also thinks that this gross chest-beating display of fascism somehow brought Americans together.
“Hopefully tonight created some unity. Even for the people that thought this was going to be some big political statement or something, this wasn’t,” he said. “This was Americans, all Americans celebrating the birthday.”
Setting aside the fact that the nation has never celebrated a sitting president’s birthday, this is a ridiculous statement.
Perhaps White would like to explain how the declaration from Josh Hokit, one of the fighters, that “Michelle Obama is a man! Am I right, America?” created unity.
Also not really unifying? The deeply unpatriotic move of letting the fighters warm up—barefoot and shirtless—in the White House’s historic Indian Treaty Room.
Watching a bunch of billionaires attend the fight to kiss Trump’s ass was also no doubt very much designed to bring Americans together—because nothing speaks to the average American like a handful of plutocrats.
The happiest billionaire was probably David Ellison, who just got the green light for his company Paramount to eat Warner Bros. because antitrust is for suckers.
The $16 million bribe that the company paid last year, ostensibly to Trump’s presidential library, probably didn’t hurt either. Ellison also likely profited handsomely from the fight itself, given that it streamed exclusively on Paramount+, which requires a paid subscription.
While billionaires were making bank, nobody knows how much this cost the rest of us. The UFC footed the bill for the fight itself, but taxpayers picked up “emergency equipment and services, including first aid/medical services, law enforcement, and security.” Lucky us!
We’re in the dark as to how many people watched this spectacle, but White is bragging that the numbers on Ellison’s Paramount+ were “monstrous.” You’ll note that White doesn’t provide any actual numbers—because when conservatives are faced with their objectively terrible viewership metrics, they’re reminded that no one likes their garbage.
Before the fight, White promised that the event would reach “Super Bowl numbers,” which, lol, lmao.
Super Bowl LX drew 124.9 million views, while the most-watched mixed martial arts match of all time was a fight between Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano, which drew 9 million views for Netflix.
Paramount+ only has 79 million subscribers worldwide, so for White’s math to work, every subscriber would have needed to tune in, and an additional 45 million or so would have needed to sign up.
We’ve been here before. Remember the Turning Point USA halftime show that was totally going to be bigger than Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance? Roughly 135 million people watched Bad Bunny, while—at best—about 6 million tuned in to watch Kid Rock stumble his way through lip-syncing his own songs.
And let’s talk about the ridiculous ads and product placement. The White House—the people’s house—was slathered in ads from companies seeking to curry favor with Trump.
Between fights, the UFC announcer shouted out the names of sponsors like crypto.com and Ram trucks. And sports merchandise behemoth Fanatics gave each fighter custom USA 250 apparel that somehow honored the nation’s birthday?
The octagon itself featured the logos of Polymarket, Monster Energy, Starlink, Bud Light, and more. Bud Light even had an actual commercial air during the fight.
That’s quite the reversal from conservatives boycotting the beer because it dared post on Instagram with a trans influencer. But now Bud Light is back in Trump’s good graces after undertaking a comprehensive eradication of Pride event sponsorships and partnering with homophobes like “comedian” Shane Gillis.
All of this was unbelievably scuzzy, but it doesn’t even come close to the scuzziness of how the fighters were paid: by World Liberty Financial, the Trump family crypto grift company that also sponsored the event. But the fighters don’t get actual money, heavens no. Instead, the Trump family decided to pay bonuses in World Liberty Financial crypto coins, because of course.
It isn’t really possible to catalog all of the ways that this thing was illegal, unethical, and gross—because it really exceeded all expectations of how bad it would be.
Trump really outdid himself for this comprehensively crass spectacle.
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