As Trump turns 80 with showstopping spectacle of cage fights at White House, big issues loom

President Donald Trump celebrates turning 80 on Sunday with a showstopping birthday spectacle that once would have seemed unfathomable: a cage-fighting show on the storied South Lawn of the White House.

This week, the hard realities of the office have threatened to overshadow the ostentatious UFC mixed martial arts extravaganza, where combatants sealed inside a wire-mesh octagon try to punch, kick, chop and pummel each other into submission. Trump has found himself boxed into an unpopular and costly war he helped start in Iran. An agreement to end the conflict could be close, but the crucial details are still to be negotiated.

Meanwhile, about a mile from Trump’s birthday bash, crews pried the president’s name off the Kennedy Center after a judge ruled naming it after Trump had gone too far.

Regardless, the president will walk out of the White House and be surrounded by Cabinet leaders, top administration officials, Republican lawmakers and 4,000-plus spectators screaming themselves hoarse in a temporary arena under “The Claw,” a spaceship-like metal arch fitted with lighting, sound equipment and large screens. Thousands more will be watching on big screens from the nearby Ellipse.

“This event is a one of one event, incredible event. I love it,” said UFC chief Dana White, a close friend of the president, during a Friday night hype session at the Lincoln Memorial where pairs of fighters shoved and scuffled for the cameras under the stoic gaze of Honest Abe’s marble likeness. The president has sought to tie Sunday’s event — which features seven fights running past midnight - to larger, months-long celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

But it is much more geared toward feting himself, so much so that the G7 summit for leaders of industrialised nations pushed back their get-together so that the president could attend his cage-match party and then fly straight to France for the meetings. The weather, though, could put a major damper on things. Strong thunderstorms and heavy lightning disrupted Friday’s Lincoln Memorial event, and the forecast for Sunday evening also looks threatening.

“I’m sick and tired of hearing about the weather,” White declared on Friday, before conceding that he’ll prefer to hold future UFC events inside arenas only.

When Trump’s predecessor, President Joe Biden, turned 80 in November 2022, he celebrated with a private family brunch at the White House, laying bare just how much and how quickly things have changed.

Asked about the contrast, White House spokesperson Allison Schuster said that the fight “will be one of the most entertaining nights in American history” and said that the timing was appropriate. “Having this spectacle take place at the people’s house on Flag Day during our nations’ semiquincentennial anniversary is a fitting tribute,” Schuster said in a statement.  When he turned 80, Biden was the oldest president in US history, and was months away from launching a reelection bid that he would ultimately abandon after a disastrous debate against Trump and mutiny among Democrats concerned he was too old to handle a second term. Trump has now supplanted Biden as the oldest person to be elected US president. He’s constitutionally barred from running again, yet constantly toys with the notion publicly. That’s despite polls showing rising public scepticism about Trump’s mental and physical health - recalling concerns Biden faced as he turned 80.

A Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted in April found that less than half of US adults think Trump has the mental sharpness or physical health to serve effectively as president.

The White House countered with a lengthy statement from Trump’s former White House physician, Texas Republican Rep. Ronny Jackson, saying Trump’s “stamina, focus, and strength are exceptional and on display every day. Claims to the contrary are pure fiction.”

Jackson added that polling concerns were “being propagated by the same biased, liberal, Trump-hating press that completely ignored the absolute cognitive and physical disaster that was President Biden.”

Trump has nonetheless undergone four publicly announced physical examinations this term alone, with White House physician Dr. Sean Barbabella recently declaring him in “excellent health.”

The UFC event is an apt metaphor for Trump’s pugilistic political style. He is as big a fan of cage-match-style politics as he is of cage-fighting itself.

But Trump has also long been a master of political misdirection, purposely presenting people with something other than his presidency to focus on when things aren’t going well.

With the war in Iran grinding on despite weeks of assurances from Trump that its end is nigh, gas prices staying high, renewed concerns about inflation and plummeting job approval ratings for Trump - a White House birthday party unlike anything America has ever seen is definitely a diversion.

“This is all distraction,” said Mike Fontaine, a classics professor at Cornell University, who likened it to the gladiatorial games of Imperial Rome, when combatants brutalised each other for public entertainment meant to bolster rulers’ popularity and quell potential unrest.

“This is a classic strategy,” Fontaine said. “In ancient Rome, the phrase would be, bread and circuses.’”

Trump says the UFC is paying for the event and while its full costs haven’t been divulged, the National Park Service said in a court filing that USD 60-plus million and tens of thousands of hours of labour have gone into it, while seven government agencies have “allocated significant resources and manpower.”

UFC also announced on Friday that it was adding as an official partner for the event World Liberty Financial to create a special USD 250,000 athlete bonus pool for Sunday night’s winners.

The cryptocurrency company is co-owned by the Trump family, founded with the president’s special diplomatic envoy Steve Witkoff and run by his son, Zach. The arrangement further blurs lines between the Trump family’s financial interests and the events and construction projects the president has prioritised and used government resources to pull off.

Still, Fontaine said that when it comes to a personal flair for pageantry, the president’s second-term tendency to lean into “hardcore masculinity and brute fighting” is marrying the UFC’s blood sport with Trump’s trademark humour and enduring sense of showmanship.

“President Trump has a once-in-a-generation talent for this stuff,” he said.