Bulwark founder Sarah Longwell and writer Jonathan Last say President Donald Trump’s Freedom 250 debacle is unraveling fast as nearly all big names on the playlist have leapt from windows to avoid the Trump stain. But both agree that this kind of chaos and collapse is par for the course in Trump’s ‘Ideocracy-style’ style America.“[The artists] all said that the White House lied to them about what it was,” said Longwell. “... [T]hey tried to sell it to them that it was bipartisan, that this is just celebrating America. And then, of course, it was on the White House lawn – with a UFC backdrop and it's coming from Trump's personal thing. So, they all say, ‘well, we were lied to.’”“Trump is having to lie to these artists to get them to say ‘yes’,” said Longwell, which, she said, is typical of things involving Trump.“Of course, this is how Trump did it, right? I mean, instead of going to the acts and being like, ‘just so you know, the president is doing this giant thing on the White House lawn’ they sold it as an event called the Great American County Fair,” said Last. “… A con man is going to con, I guess.”Another frame for the whole thing, added Longwell, is that the event amounts to Trump “just wanting to help out his buddy,” citing the fact that Trump bought between $15k and $50k worth of stock in UFC parent company TKO Holding Group weeks ahead of the event — possibly in expectation of a rise in stock prices once the White House event was announced.“It's much more like crypto,” said Last. “UFC is the crypto of sports. There are people who are really into it. It's growing in popularity, but it's still niche. Your average American does not watch UFC And your average American does not own crypto.”Last also described the UFC as “heavily male-coded in ways that even the NFL and football are not.”“This really does tell … three-quarters of the women in America to ‘f—— off. Like, this is not for you.’ And it's weird to pick something [like that] for the 250th anniversary of America Celebration on the White House Lawn,” said Last, adding that “you only get one shot at” at something like this to pick so polarizing a niche.Longwell said she had only recently seen the 2006 satirical sci-fi comedy Idiocracy, directed by Mike Judge, and finally noticed the similarity between the wrestling-obsessed imbeciles running future America and the Trump administration and its MAGA supporters.“'Idiocracy' feels like a documentary,” Longwell lamented.
