{"id":1599,"date":"2026-06-14T09:05:37","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T09:05:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=1599"},"modified":"2026-06-14T09:05:37","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T09:05:37","slug":"inside-the-disturbing-message-behind-tonights-trump-spectacle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=1599","title":{"rendered":"Inside the disturbing message behind tonight’s Trump spectacle"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Tonight, Trump is throwing an 80th birthday bash for himself (he says<\/em> it\u2019s in honor of the 250th birthday of the United States) with a \u201cFreedom250\u201d Ultimate Fighting Championship cage match on the South Lawn of the White House at 8 p.m. ET. <\/p>\n

Read more Americans crushed this same Trump con Republicans pushed 100 years ago<\/a><\/p>\n

It will be a bloody gladiator fight taking place inside a 600-ton, 154-feet-tall skeletal structure called \u201cthe Claw,\u201d painted red, white and blue. Opponents will punch, kick, wrestle, choke, and use jiu-jitsu on each other until one of them is unconscious or verbally concedes, or a referee stops the fight because one is judged too damaged to absorb any more violence. <\/p>\n

This is a money-making operation for the UFC (which is offering special-access VIP packages for $1.5 million), for Trump buddy David Ellison\u2019s Paramount (which will livestream it to you if you buy a subscription for $8.99 a month \u2014 see here), for Crypto.com and Ram (which are sponsoring it), and for Trump (who\u2019s deciding which of his billionaire friends and CEO buddies will be invited ringside. Last night, Trump held a $1 million-a-person dinner at the Trump National Golf Club at Potomac, Virginia, to benefit his Super PAC, Maga Inc.).<\/p>\n

Beyond the usual Trumpian issues of self-dealing and pay-to-play corruption, today\u2019s fight also raises the question: What does a cage match on the White House lawn have to do with America\u2019s 250th anniversary? <\/p>\n

Just this: Trump and his regime are seeking to project an America that\u2019s like the winner of a cage match. <\/p>\n

Trump sees everything and everyone in terms of dominance or submission, and he\u2019s hellbent on dominance. \u201cYou\u2019ll never take back our country with weakness, you have to show strength and you have to be strong,\u201d he told his supporters on January 6, 2021, before urging them to go the Capitol. <\/p>\n

He views America as locked in a zero-sum match with the rest of the world, and there\u2019s no limit to our violence. Unless Iran opened the Strait of Hormuz, he memorably said, \u201ca whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s entire \u201cmanosphere\u201d is obsessed with force and violence. His secretary of \u201cwar,\u201d Pete Hegseth, threatens \u201cno quarter, no mercy for our enemies\u201d and \u201cmaximum violence to the enemy.\u201d When told some fishermen survived the American bombing of their boat, Hegseth reportedly ordered his commander to \u201ckill them all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s secretary of health and human services frequently posts shirtless workout videos in which he\u2019s lifting weights alongside figures like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Kid Rock. He claims Trump has \u201cthe highest testosterone level\u201d ever seen in an individual over 70 years old.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s whole circle \u2014 including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and JD Vance \u2014 glorify male prowess and power. (In a Twitter exchange a few years ago, Musk said he was \u201cup for a cage fight\u201d with Zuckerberg, who replied: \u201cSend me location,\u201d eliciting from Musk: \u201cVegas Octagon,\u201d and the suggestion that podcaster Joe Rogan referee.) Musk and Vance champion pronatalism \u2014 the belief that the single greatest threat to Western civilization is collapsing birth rates \u2014 and argue that Western women must have more children.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump broke his biggest election promise \u2014 and Republicans enabled the betrayal<\/a><\/p>\n

Much of the Republican Party is likewise focusing on male virility. Texas Republican senatorial candidate Ken Paxton calls the Democratic candidate \u201clow-T Talarico.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of this comes directly from the fascist playbook, organized around a \u201cstrongman\u201d touting male dominance. In that playbook, war and violence are thought means of strengthening society by culling the weak and extolling heroic warriors. <\/p>\n

I suspect many Americans find Trump\u2019s neofascist \u201cstrongman\u201d attractive because they feel powerless in a society that\u2019s left them behind. The cage match and similar public displays of aggression enable them to feel vicariously powerful.<\/p>\n

Young men in particular \u2014 who make up a disproportionate share of Trump\u2019s base \u2014 have been economically emasculated. Most lack college degrees at a time when such a degree is necessary (although hardly sufficient) for a decent job, and when some 60 percent of university undergraduates and 67 percent of graduate students are female.<\/p>\n

In this way, cage matches darkly echo \u201cThe Full Monty,\u201d the 1997 British comedy about unemployed steelworkers in Sheffield, England, who form a male striptease act to make quick cash. <\/p>\n

But the cage match today on the White House lawn is no laughing matter. It\u2019s deadly serious and deeply troubling. <\/p>\n

When so many Americans are struggling to make ends meet, Trump\u2019s gladiator fight suggests that the essence of the nation on its 250th birthday isn\u2019t the democratic ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, nor is it the pull-yourself-up-from-the-bootstraps ambition that\u2019s driven our economy, but zero-sum violence and male aggression. <\/p>\n

What do you think?<\/p>\n

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https:\/\/robertreich.substack.com\/.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more Devastation: Economist uncovers searing truth about the trillionaire threat to democracy<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tonight, Trump is throwing an 80th birthday bash for himself (he says it\u2019s in honor of the 250th birthday of the United States) with a \u201cFreedom250\u201d Ultimate Fighting Championship cage match on the South Lawn of the White House at 8 p.m. ET. It will be a bloody gladiator fight taking place inside a 6…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nInside the disturbing message behind tonight's Trump spectacle - Next Address America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=1599\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Inside the disturbing message behind tonight's Trump spectacle - Next Address America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Tonight, Trump is throwing an 80th birthday bash for himself (he says it\u2019s in honor of the 250th birthday of the United States) with a \u201cFreedom250\u201d Ultimate Fighting Championship cage match on the South Lawn of the White House at 8 p.m. ET. 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