<\/p>\n
As President Trump prepares to host UFC cage fights on the White House lawn to celebrate 250 years of American democracy and his own 80th birthday, viewers who dig displays of domination will be exhilarated. But why stop at blood sport?<\/p>\n
The ratings could be higher if Trump added even more provocative spectacles. Have J. D. Vance sit in a dunk tank in the Rose Garden where any Mar-a-Lago member can have a throw! Have a Twinkie-eating contest in the Situation Room! And given that the UFC is already doing weigh-ins right there<\/i> at the Lincoln Memorial<\/a> and the Reflecting Pool is newly painted, why not throw a spring-break-style rager for the overflow crowd? After all, industrial-grade foam cannons cost less than $3,000.<\/p>\n You\u2019ve probably guessed that my own preference is no vulgar entertainment at the White House, but not because I don\u2019t enjoy any forms of it or wish to sneer at fans of UFC. It\u2019s my preference for the same reason that I\u2019d gladly gamble on a Saturday night at a basement poker table but not on Sunday morning at a church altar: There are times and places for things.<\/p>\n Most presidents have tried to maintain decorum at their residence, knowing the White House is a symbol of the United States and that its gravitas is the work of generations. White House events needn\u2019t be fancy or cater to elites in order to be appropriate. The venue belongs to champion Little League teams as much as it belongs to the winner of the Masters, as much to bluegrass bands as to classical cellists. But there\u2019s a difference between popular entertainment and what Trump is planning, which many citizens find distasteful\u2014and is thus unsuited for a jubilee meant to unite us.<\/p>\n Trump isn\u2019t known to prioritize respectability arguments or appeals to civic virtue. In fact, you might expect all sorts of vulgar entertainment from a former casino and beauty-pageant owner, if entertainment were the only purpose. But like a Roman emperor presiding over combat at the Colosseum, Trump hosting a cage fight serves a purpose beyond merely titillating the masses. It is a political tactic whereby Trump draws on violence\u2014or imagery of violence\u2014in order to be seen as strong.<\/p>\n The gambit perhaps first occurred to him in 1989, when Trump discerned that he could raise his own profile by associating himself with the popular thirst for violent retribution. After a jogger was raped in Central Park, he took out a full-page ad<\/a> in four newspapers that began \u201cBring Back the Death Penalty.\u201d \u201cI want to hate these muggers and murderers,\u201d Trump wrote. \u201cThey should be forced to suffer.\u201d (Several Black and Latino teenagers would later be wrongfully convicted in the case.)<\/p>\n As a presidential candidate and elected official, Trump has gone much further. In 2024, The Atlantic<\/i> compiled a brief history of his violent remarks<\/a>, which then totaled at least 40 instances and has only increased. In 2016, Trump sought to convey that he dominates and humiliates his political opponents by posting GIFs<\/a> that portrayed him wrestling a celebrity.land logo to the mat and hitting a golf ball into Hillary Clinton\u2019s back. He tried to cultivate an image as a tough guy<\/a> by suggesting that protesters at rallies deserved to be roughed up by the crowd, and promising to pay the legal fees of those who did so. As president in 2017, he told a crowd of law-enforcement officers that they should be less careful about protecting the heads of arrestees while putting them in police cars. After Representative Greg Gianforte physically assaulted a reporter in 2018, Trump said, \u201cAny guy who can do a body slam, he\u2019s my guy.\u201d<\/p>\n Until Trump, modern presidents generally treated the killings of terrorists with solemnity<\/a>, underscoring the notion that it is rooted in lawful justice meted out by the state, not bloodlust or personal vengeance. When Barack Obama announced the death of Osama Bin Laden in 2011, he spoke about how the aftermath of 9\/11 left \u201ca gaping hole in our hearts\u201d and united people \u201cas one American family.\u201d When Trump announced the death of the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019, he seemed to want to personally humiliate him, emphasizing that al-Baghdadi died \u201clike a dog\u201d after \u201crunning into a dead-end tunnel, whimpering and crying and screaming all the way.\u201d<\/p>\n In his second term, Trump said of the U.S. Navy, \u201cWe\u2019re like pirates<\/a>.\u201d His administration has killed more than 200 people on board various boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean, then posted memes celebrating the strikes. Reflecting on the administration\u2019s videos and memes, the Marine Corps veteran Phil Klay<\/a> wrote, \u201cI suspect the question the administration cares about is not \u2018is this legal,\u2019 \u2018is this a war crime,\u2019 \u2018is this murder\u2019 or even \u2018is this good for America,\u2019 but rather, \u2018isn\u2019t this violence delightful?\u2019\u201d I suspect that the propaganda surrounding the boat strikes is mostly meant to associate Trump with strength, dominance, and the ability to vanquish.<\/p>\n Lots of presidents have deported migrants who are here unlawfully, but Trump has made a show of sending some to a foreign prison notorious for abusing inmates<\/a>. His Department of Homeland Security regularly posts photos of people being deported, emphasizing and celebrating their shackles<\/a>. Again and again, at rallies, on social media, and most infamously on January 6, parts of Trump\u2019s base have been invigorated by violent spectacle.<\/p>\n On Trump\u2019s 80th birthday, blood sport will be the diversion of choice at the White House because he wants<\/i> to associate his presidency and himself with the violent domination and humiliation of rivals. America itself is weaker now on the world stage than it was when Trump began either of his presidencies. But when one cage fighter pummels another inside the octagon next weekend, Trump will benefit if Americans think the same thing that Joe Rogan said in a podcast episode about the event: <\/i>That\u2019s \u201cso Trump<\/i><\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.theatlantic.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As President Trump prepares to host UFC cage fights on the White House lawn to celebrate 250 years of American democracy and his own 80th birthday, viewers who dig displays of domination will be exhilarated. But why stop at blood sport? The ratings could be higher if Trump added even more provocative spectacles. Have J. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2448325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2448324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Why-Trump-Wants-to-Celebrate-His-Birthday-With-a-Cage.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2448324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2448324"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2448324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2448326,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2448324\/revisions\/2448326"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2448325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2448324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2448324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2448324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}