UFC revealed its design for the White House cage match fight event in June and the internet didn't hold back from mocking it.Construction for the UFC Freedom 250 stage was underway on Monday with the June 14 event slated to celebrate the nation's 250th birthday and President Donald Trump's own 80th birthday. While construction for the ballroom continued, two cranes were seen on hoisting up a metal arch for lighting over the stage.People online reacted to the design released by UFC over the weekend."Pray for rain," Chris D. Jackson, a political strategist and longtime election official with more than 132,000 followers, wrote in post on X."If he can do this he doesn't need a ballroom," Tracey Gallagher, an attorney and former Judge Pro Tem with nearly 13,000 followers, wrote in a post on X."I really hope they fly a flag with 48 stars and 11 stripes," political commentator Kes Bretagne wrote on X."While we are at war and inflation/energy costs are going through the roof," Gary Koepnick, who self-identifies as a veteran and has more than 44,000 followers, wrote on X.Pray for rain. https://t.co/DoUyIQcxwD— Chris D. Jackson (@ChrisDJackson) May 25, 2026
President Donald Trump's latest White House makeover touches have taken a new turn as it becomes a "construction zone eyesore," The Daily Beast reported. Images on Monday revealed two cranes building a metal arch for lighting over the UFC Freedom 250 stage, just near the White House’s Executive Residence. As the ballroom construction has been ongoing, the White House "began looking more like an oversized event venue on Monday as crews prepared for the UFC extravaganza Trump is throwing on June 14 to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday and his own 80th," The Beast reported. This is all happening amid reports of a "bug infestation" that Dana White, UFC CEO and MAGA supporter, has expressed could be a problem for the large-scale event."President Trump just opened the Rose Garden two nights ago, and he invited me to dinner there. The amount of gnats that were flying around. I’m like, 'Holy s--t,'" White said during an episode of the Boardroom podcast."As soon as I got on the plane, I called my head of production and said, 'Yeah, let me tell you about the gnat situation tonight,'" White said. "So when you’re a fighter, think about that lighting grid, the amount of power in the lights… moths, gnats, and God knows what else."White said they could add fans surrounding the venue to help stop the bugs because "gnats have a hard time in the wind."
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) will be in the fight of his political life Tuesday, as he looks to defy the odds and defeat Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who clinched an endorsement from President Trump, in the Senate GOP runoff. The last-minute support tees up another test of Trump’s influence in a Republican primary. The president has already successfully picked off several…
Vice President JD Vance snubbed Democratic state attorneys general in a White House invite for an upcoming meeting for his fraud task force, according to a Politico report on Monday.President Donald Trump named Vance "the face of the administration’s efforts to combat fraud" in March and the vice president has a meeting slated for Tuesday to continue the conversations with states as part of the new initiative to combat fraud. But what's happened behind-the-scenes was strategic, according to four administration insiders who spoke with Politico."Invitations for the hourlong meeting, set for Tuesday afternoon, were sent to Democratic attorneys general on Friday with a deadline to RSVP by Saturday, according to one of the people, who like others in this report, was granted anonymity to discuss nonpublic details," Politico reported. "Republican attorneys general were invited to the event about a week prior, the person said."The event was originally scheduled to only host Republican attorneys generals — but Vance reportedly later pushed back on that, one source told Politico. "About 15 Republican attorneys general — including Derek Brown of Utah, Marty Jackley of South Dakota, Raúl Labrador of Idaho, Gentner Drummond of Oklahoma and Todd Rokita of Indiana — are expected to attend, one of the people said," Politico reported. "Democrats are largely expected to skip the meeting, two people said, although some offices are expected to send other staffers, according to a third person."
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche says the shooting near the White House over the weekend reiterates the need for President Trump’s ballroom. Blanche, in a federal court filing on Sunday, argued the incident “underscores the critical need for top level, state of the art security at the White House, including the Ballroom.” The filing was…
After tearing down the White House East Wing without the legal authority to do so, President Donald Trump is now acting in a way which suggests he may have designs on the building’s iconic Ionic columns.“President Donald Trump appeared absorbed by the White House’s columns on Monday, lingering for several minutes and running his hands along the stonework,” The Daily Beast's Erkki Forster reported on Monday night. “The row of columns framing the White House’s entrance seemed to arrest the 79-year-old president’s attention as he returned from Arlington National Cemetery after delivering a boastful Memorial Day speech.”Noting that the video of Trump assessing the column was first posted by NewsNation’s Kellie Meyer, Forster added that the video seemed to show Trump “tracing the bottom of the column with his hands as he appeared to study its details. According to White House press pool reports, Trump spent six minutes outside the entrance before walking inside.” He also seemed to order photographers to take pictures of the column.While some online have speculated that this is further evidence of Trump’s supposed cognitive decline, others have pointed out that Trump has previously advocated for the column to be torn down and replaced with a more luxurious alternative.“Rodney Mims Cook Jr., the Trump appointee who chairs the Commission of Fine Arts, a federal arts commission, proposed replacing the Ionic columns with Corinthian columns, a more luxurious style preferred by Trump, The Washington Post first reported in March,” Forster wrote. In that Washington Post article, it was observed that “the Trump-appointed head of a federal arts commission is proposing to replace them with a more ornate style favored by President Donald Trump. Those more decorative columns, a style known as Corinthian, are considered the most luxurious in classical architecture and appear on buildings such as the U.S. Capitol and the Supreme Court. They have long been deployed on Trump’s properties, and the president has handpicked them for his planned White House ballroom, too.”Defending their position to the Post, Cook claimed that the “Corinthian is the highest order [of column], and that’s what our other two branches of government have. Why the White House didn’t originally use them, at least on the north front, which is considered the front door, is beyond me.”In fact, the White House was designed with Ionic columns precisely because they are considered to be less ostentatious. Their purpose was to reinforce the notion that the White House is the “People’s House.”If Trump destroys the White House’s columns, that will not be his first unilateral change on the building he is legally supposed to only inhabit temporarily. Trump had previously destroyed the White House’s historic East Wing to build his ballroom, and continues to push for the $1 billion ballroom despite being told by the courts that he has no legal authority to do so and despite initially claiming it would not cost taxpayer money. He has also announced plans to rip out a fixture installed by President Thomas Jefferson, saying he would install in its place a "beautiful, black granite" installation to replace the Tennessee Flagstone pavers on the West Wing Colonnade. Trump said he would pay for the installation himself and send the Jeffersonian originals to a nursery for safekeeping.
New photos of the White House show it immersed in what the Daily Beast calls “construction chaos” as President Donald Trump continues to prioritize his vanity projects over voter concerns. The grounds were already swamped with construction as Trump’s controversial ballroom project progresses regardless of vocal opposition, and now “the People’s House” is being further blighted by renovations as the president prepares to mark his 80th birthday with UFC cage matches in front of the White House this June.According to Republican operatives who spoke with the Daily Beast, the construction projects don’t just look ugly, but are sending a negative message to Americans struggling with skyrocketing prices and a spiraling economy due to Trump’s war with Iran. “For voters, the message that is coming from the White House is Trump is focused on vanity projects and foreign policy,” said one operative. “And those are things that voters don’t care about.” “Trump continues to talk about things that no one cares about,” agreed another. With 90 percent of Americans reporting an affordability crisis, Trump is persistent in his denial. When asked about the economic downturn, he claimed, “This is peanuts. I appreciate everybody putting up with it for a little while. It won’t be much longer.” He made the statement while standing in front of his ballroom construction “eyesore.”In early May, Trump was even more blunt about where he places the American pocketbook on his list of priorities. When asked how much the finances of Americans factored into his war considerations, he declared, “Not even a little bit… I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation.”At the same time, Trump is asking for big money to pay for his vanity projects, which continue to grow in number. For the ballroom alone, he’s demanding that Congress provide as much as $1 billion, even though he began the project saying its $400 million price tag would be paid by private donors. On top of that, he wants an estimated $100 million to build a 250-foot arch that will loom over DC, has allocated $40 million for a statuary garden, is pouring over $13 million into repainting the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool (a project that has already been botched), has spent untold sums renovating the White House to align with his taste for golden trim, and the list goes on.While the White House UFC event will supposedly be paid for by the fighting organization, Trump’s decision to hold it at all has been criticized as unpresidential, even by some in the MMA community. Star fighter Brandon Royval, for example, has referred to it as “some kind of Hunger Games type f—— s——.”
