By admin 
- President Donald Trump decided to host a UFC fight at the White House after his post-election appearance at a UFC fight at Madison Square Garden.
- The $60 million event on the South Lawn comes as Trump faces low approval ratings amid a war with Iran and rising inflation.
- Some allies worry the spectacle will exacerbate perceptions Trump is focused on personal pet projects rather than governing.
Donald Trump was at the height of his power when he decided to stage a UFC fight on the South Lawn of America’s most famous address.
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Fresh off his 2024 presidential win, he made a triumphant trip to Madison Square Garden for an Ultimate Fighting Championship event.
Kid Rock’s “American Bad Ass” blared as he entered the arena flanked by billionaires and politicians who had left him for dead just three years earlier. Celebrities lined up to shake his hand. Chants of “USA” rained down from a crowd filled with the young men who Trump had made the backbone of his new political coalition.
And as he basked in the ovation, the president-elect determined the White House should host an even bigger and better spectacle.
“That’s when he officially decided he wanted to do it,” said one White House official with knowledge of the private deliberations.
Nineteen months and an estimated $60 million later, Trump will get his wish on his 80th birthday. The president is set to preside over a slate of UFC fights on Sunday held in the hulking, 87-foot octagon that now consumes much of the South Lawn.
But the event itself — billed as a celebration of America’s 250th anniversary — is perhaps the only element of Trump’s original vision that’s gone to plan.
Far removed from those post-election highs, he will take the stage this weekend at the weakest point of his presidency, mired in an unpopular war abroad and struggling to contain rising costs at home. A growing majority of Americans disapprove of his performance, polls show, threatening the GOP’s grip on power in the midterms and exposing cracks in Trump’s base.
And now, instead of a legacy-making manifestation of Trump’s success, some allies worry, the UFC fight risks becoming just the latest and biggest symbol of the personal excesses that have contributed to his unpopularity.
“I’ll be there, but I’m not thrilled about it,” Joe Rogan, the popular podcaster who endorsed Trump in 2024 and will commentate the fights, said of the event in March. “It just doesn’t seem like a wise idea.”
Still, the event has also prompted extraordinary jockeying within Trump’s MAGA base, with aides, allies and supporters all trying to score access. Supporters described running into roadblocks with their usual connections inside the administration — with some senior officials even advising ticket-seekers to take their asks straight to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, or just try their luck on Ticketmaster.
“Forget it,” one longtime Trump ally said of the odds facing those still trying to get into the event. “It’s the hottest ticket in Trumpworld by far.”
Trump first casually mentioned the idea of a UFC fight when his transition team was brainstorming ways to replicate the nontraditional but attention-grabbing events they staged on the campaign trail, like when the GOP nominee drove a campaign-branded garbage truck in Wisconsin, two people familiar with the discussions said. And now the president’s closest advisers are relishing how a UFC fight at the White House is similarly pushing the envelope.
But the high-profile event underscores Trump’s fixation on a slate of personal projects across Washington, DC, the political utility of which has prompted concerns among some Republicans worried about the midterms.
The president is overseeing construction of a massive White House ballroom, pushing for the creation of a 250-foot “triumphal arch” and seeking to redevelop a local golf course. Those come on top of a weekslong repainting of the Reflecting Pool and several smaller efforts to make over key parts of the White House, including the Oval Office and Rose Garden.
Few of the projects have proven popular with Americans. And his efforts suffered a major blow when a federal judge said his name had to be removed from the Kennedy Center. But despite the scrutiny — and a slew of lawsuits challenging his authority — Trump has maintained an intimate role in the planning and execution of those undertakings.
That personal enthusiasm has extended to the UFC fight, which has been months in the making and has transformed the White House’s South Lawn. Trump worked closely with UFC head and longtime friend Dana White since that November Madison Square Garden appearance to plot out a multiday celebration that will include a Saturday fan festival on the Ellipse south of the White House.
The members-only club Executive Branch, meanwhile, is slated to host a far more exclusive party on Sunday for the MAGA elite descending on Washington, according to a copy of the invitation obtained by CNN.
The fights will take place in the massive South Lawn octagon nicknamed “the Claw,” with roughly 4,000 people in attendance.
“It’s right at the front door to the White House,” Trump boasted in an interview last month. “It’s never happened before, and you’ll never see it again.”
Within Trump’s orbit, some allies hope that the spectacle will help reenergize some of the young men who helped power his 2024 victory but have since partially drifted away from the GOP.
“It’s a cool thing to use the trappings of the White House to promote the UFC and bring a new audience closer [to Pennsylvania Ave.], something that many might never have the opportunity to do,” said White House communications director and longtime Trump adviser Steven Cheung, who previously ran communications for the UFC. “And the president is an honest, true fan. He knows the fight cards, he knows their stats.”
In addition to Rogan, conservative podcasters and influencers who played key roles in promoting Trump’s 2024 campaign are expected to be at the fight, including the YouTuber Nelk Boys and businessman Patrick Bet-David.
The UFC, which is footing the roughly $60 million bill for the event, has retained control of most of the tickets. Trump is personally selecting who among his staff gets the rest, two White House officials said. In a further sign of the importance he’s assigned to the fight, Trump’s Cabinet and first lady Melania Trump are expected to attend.
Yet even with all the hype, it remains unclear whether an event that the president has touted as “the greatest show on Earth” will resonate beyond his most devoted supporters.
He’s bled support among men and younger voters who enthusiastically backed him in 2024 but have since grown more skeptical amid continued cost-of-living concerns and frustration with the war with Iran.
The president has repeatedly downplayed concerns about the domestic impact of the conflict, brushing off rising inflation as a minor side effect to his pursuit of greater national security. One poll this week found just 16% of Americans believed it was appropriate to hold the star-studded event, which comes days after Trump again downplayed the rising inflation making everyday goods more expensive.
Against that backdrop, one night of UFC fighting is unlikely to allay the broader concerns weighing on many of his supporters, said Art Davie, one of the original founders of the tournament that eventually became UFC.
Davie, who also once roomed with Trump as young cadets at the New York Military Academy, told CNN that he supported and voted for the president in 2016, 2020 and 2024. He applauded Trump’s bid to bring the UFC to the South Lawn, hailing it as a legitimizing event for a sport that once faced years of political and cultural opposition, including the late Sen. John McCain’s characterization of it as “human cockfighting.”
But like others, he’s since grown concerned by Trump’s foreign entanglements. The Iran war amounts to a betrayal of the president’s initial pledge to avoid the missteps of his predecessors and not start any new conflicts, said Davie, a longtime Republican voter. Trump’s subsequent suggestions that he may take Cuba by force have only deepened that disappointment.
“He made a number of campaign statements about no wars that I found to be viable and appealing,” Davie said. “So I’m not happy that he decided on Feb. 28 to pursue a war with Iran, and I’m not sure that’s been a good decision.”
In Trump’s attempts to reshape both the White House grounds and the global balance of power, Davie added, he sees a theme that’s common among his contemporaries: An increasing focus on the legacy that they’re going to leave behind.
“He’s very much legacy-oriented at this point,” he said. “But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that with something like these foreign entanglements, you have to figure out ahead of time how far you want to go or where you want to go.”
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CNN’s Isabelle Khurshudyan contributed to this report.