By Jeffrey Blehar
Tuesday, June 16, 2026
Yes, it was Trump’s 80th birthday on Sunday, and the
nation was invited to celebrate the patriotic holiday on Paramount Plus. It’s
not quite America’s 250th anniversary, but the administration oh so subtly
sought to conflate the two by hosting a UFC event on the White House lawn and branding it “Freedom
250” — in conjunction with Trump’s since-collapsed Fourth of July ceremonies — complete with a
flyover by a combined squadron of USAF Thunderbirds and USN Blue Angels. (They sure do look impressive.)
Both Trump and UFC owner Dana White insisted with a
straight face that the event — which Americans could watch only if they
purchased a subscription to Paramount Plus (owned by Trump friend David
Ellison) — was being held on June 14 instead of the July 4 weekend because June
14 is, uh, Flag Day, a holiday many readers might know about from reading this
column, just now. But — and this is to White’s credit — the UFC footed the
entire $60 million bill for the affair (outside of paying for the jet fuel, one
imagines), figuring it didn’t even matter if it lost money on this particular
event, because the positive public exposure was unbeatable for a sport that, 30
years ago, was banned in 36 states and is now legal in all 50.
I am no UFC aficionado myself (a surprising number of my
younger NR colleagues are), so I will admit I found the images of sweaty,
bare-chested brawlers striding out of the Oval Office or the Red Room before
stalking across the South Lawn to do battle in the White House Octagon to be
delightfully surreal, in that nonjudgmental sense of “I guess this is where we
are in political culture now, in 2026.” More judgmentally, it was all far too
gladiatorial for my tastes. UFC is fine and has its place, but is that place at
the White House? I know that few of those with power believe in the dignity of
American institutions anymore, but it seems we’ve stopped even paying lip
service to the idea.
And that has consequences: When one of the victorious
fighters ended his Octagon interview with Joe Rogan (there in his official
capacity as UFC host) by vulgarly shouting “Michelle Obama is a man! Am I right,
America?” it was a moment that immediately brought the partisan reality of
these events thudding back to earth. Why say something like that? Either you
seek to alienate and antagonize part of your audience or you’re confident you
already know who they are, so you’re playing to them. Either way, it’s not
about America anymore, it’s about tribal feeling.
But in any event, the weather held out. Motocross cycles were flipped,
UFC fighters brawled, and the Democrats even helpfully put their Boomer
haplessness on display by counterprogramming with a painfully cringy folk singalong called “Rise Up, Sing Out: A Concert
for the First Amendment.” (As displayed on-screen, “RISEUPSINGOUT” called to
mind a religious revival about relief from the indignities of gout.) There
Robert De Niro was, reliably alienating normal Americans: “I hate to say it,
but loving our country is starting to sound like an abused spouse saying they
love their abuser.”
It was a Carnival of Fools no matter where you looked
this Sunday, the sort of froth I was made for. So why did it all feel so grim,
like Prince Prospero’s partygoers in Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death,” shut
up in their sealed world, carousing as the plague raged around them? Sure,
there’s the news of the Iran “peace deal” Trump is chasing like a $10 bill
being yanked across the street on a fishing line, which throws the party on
the White House lawn into somber relief.
But really the reason the spectacle rang hollow is that
it was all about Trump. Staged on his birthday, for his audience, his America,
complete with tacky slurs hurled at the former first lady, for a paying
audience of fanatics, it inevitably played like Trump’s attempt to force
America to love and respect him by leveraging the power and prerogative of the
Oval Office to celebrate himself. Trump has a 38 percent approval rating right
now and is visibly flailing at all endeavors except persecuting his domestic
enemies. No amount of spectacle can distract from that.
On Monday morning, Trump announced on Truth Social that
the official Fourth of July celebration in Washington, D.C., solemnly marking
America’s 250th anniversary, would officially be converted into “the most spectacular TRUMP
RALLY of them all.” But don’t worry, it’s also a “TRIBUTE TO AMERICA.” Trump
promises Americans that his patriotic ceremony “will have none of those people
that put you to sleep and constantly complain,” but instead military flyovers,
the “LARGEST FIREWORKS SHOW IN HISTORY,” and “keynote remarks that you will not
want to miss” from . . . you guessed it, the man of the hour, the man you want
to hear, the only important man on that stage: Donald Trump.
Little wonder that no one with any self-respect wants to
share that stage with him.
The Curtain, Er, Tarp Falls on the Trump
Kennedy Center
A brief note on some minor yet inextricably related news.
As readers already well know, in December of last year Donald Trump decided
that his name should be added to the Kennedy Center, the famous
public performance venue in Washington, D.C. His name was placed on the
building’s façade and official letterhead within the span of a single
afternoon, and Trump proceeded to crow about how he and Kennedy were now properly
immortalized together as equal presidential Giants of the Arts.
In the aftermath, of course, the Kennedy Center was
forced almost immediately to close its doors. Not for “renovations,” as claimed by
Trump, but because nearly every single scheduled performer canceled bookings at
the center rather than ratify Trump’s illegal and repulsively vain act. Trump
would be damned, however, before he removed his name — his glorious name — from
above that of John F. Kennedy.
Until the decision in Beatty v. Trump in late May, that is. The U.S. District
Court for the District of Columbia ruled predictably and correctly: that since
the Kennedy Center was named by a congressional statute, the name could not be
changed without one, and Trump therefore had to remove his name from all
physical signage on, in, or near the building. Trump had until June 12 to
comply, and after exhausting all attempts at delay, over the weekend he finally
did.
Only you can’t see the façade anymore. Yes, in an act of
truly stupendous pettiness, Trump has apparently decided that if his name can’t
be on the outside of the Kennedy Center, then nobody gets to see the outside
of the Kennedy Center. Trump ordered a series of tarps to be put up,
preventing pictures from being taken of the symbolic removal and the name of
the venue from being seen at a distance. Even though the work is done, the
tarps remain up, with no date set for when they will be removed. My guess is:
not one second before a court order is issued demanding they come down.
Welcome, World Cup Tourists
World Cup fever is hitting America! With all due respect
to my European readers, I could not care less about soccer myself. Which makes
me different from Donald Trump, who apparently loves it so much that he
suggested for a second time last week that American football should
be renamed out of deference to the superiority of the Golden Game. But like
everyone else, I do love a good nationalist sports rally, and the stories
emerging around the United States about the visit of so many different national
teams, and their fans, are a pleasant and uplifting contrast to the stereotypes
we normally read about U.S.-European enmity.
The Scottish national team, in the World Cup for the
first time in 28 years, defeated Haiti in their first match as their fans sang
“Loch Lomond” in the stands of Gillette Stadium. They then went to Fenway Park
to celebrate by chanting about current national team star “Super”
John McGinn for 45 minutes before heading out to conquer every Boston bar
within reach. The Algerians have been drowned in enthusiasm and support by the residents of
Lawrence, Kan., who don’t give a rip about North Africa, but they’re into the
athleticism of it all. (Also, they’re Kansans, famously some of the most decent
people on earth. Superman’s baby escape pod crashed in Smallville for a
reason.)
And of course everybody’s talking about Freddy the German, a World Cup tourist who set off with his
friends to catch the Germans in their games, see the sights of America, and
tweet about it as well. Freddy’s wide-eyed disbelief at the sprawling abundance
of middle America — Buc-ee’s, Bass Pro Shops, Costco, and vast horizons — has
made him a viral sensation. J. J. Watt comped him and his friends hotel rooms
in Houston, pop star Ella Langley reached out and invited him and his friends
to a concert, and every sports team in every city in the South has rolled out the
red carpet. The internet being what it is, there are inevitably envious
killjoys grumbling about how this kid is (literally) living the Summer of
Freddy. Me? I just think it’s more proof that the American dream is still real,
even for Germans.
I also found myself feeling blue, amid all of this
international good cheer, that my city wasn’t hosting any World Cup games this
year. I would have loved to see throngs of random foreigners from many lands tripping through my neighborhood. Then I
sighed and remembered that I live in Chicago; it’s probably better if the soccer
tourists leave America with a good impression of it and without being mugged.
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