Trump Turns White House UFC Cage Match Into Massive Cash Grab |
Trump Turns White House UFC Cage Match Into Massive Cash Grab
Tickets for the event are supposed to be free, but the Trump administration has already found a way to make millions.
Tickets to President Trump’s planned UFC fight on the White House lawn are going to cost a hefty amount.
NBC News reports that even though the UFC is paying for the event, and that tickets are technically free, sponsorship packages including ringside seats are going for $1 million-plus, with BBC Sport putting them as high as $1.5 million. Neither the White House nor the UFC have said where the sponsorship money is going.
Trump is personally selecting most of the 4,000-plus spectators for the event to be held on June 14, which happens to be his 80th birthday.
“I’m going to make a lot of enemies because it’s impossible to get everyone tickets,” Trump told NBC Friday in a telephone interview.
Trump will likely reward people who have given him political or business favors in the past, or those who are willing to pay up to attend. White House communications director Steven Cheung told NBC that Trump was splitting up his tickets among administration staffers, military servicemembers, and VIPs. The last group could include anyone Trump wants, including members of Congress and foreign dignitaries.
“I get calls, texts or emails every day — a few times every day,” Cheung, a former UFC spokesperson, said of the ticket requests he and other White House staffers are getting. UFC’s own president and CEO Dana White said last month that he only had taken about 200 tickets for himself and gave the rest to Trump, while TKO controls another 200.
An unnamed Trump adviser told NBC that the event is “his show, and it’s being treated that way.”
“The process has been absolute chaos,” the adviser said. “It’s hard to overstate how many requests have come in, but there is no doubt the people President Trump wants there will be there, and those he does not will not be.”
The president and CEO of UFC parent company TKO Holdings, Mark Shapiro, said in an earnings call earlier this month that the company expected to lose as much as $30 million on the event.
Knowing Trump, he’s going to take whatever money he can from the fight, and Republicans in Congress will work to ensure that there is no transparency (possibly in exchange for tickets). The spectacle will essentially be a circus trading off of the presidency, with Trump as a monarch watching people fight for his amusement in the octagon or to get a seat by his side.
Democrats Throw Hail Mary to Supreme Court as GOP Steal Seats
Democrats suffered a huge loss on voting maps.
Democrats asked the Supreme Court Monday to block a state judiciary ruling that upended their redistricting effort.
The Virginia Supreme Court ruled Friday that the proposed maps were essentially invalid because state Democrats did not follow proper procedure. In Virginia, the General Assembly is required to pass a constitutional amendment not just once, but twice. The first vote must be conducted during a regularly scheduled legislative election, while the second vote has to take place after, before the question is put to voters.
The court ruled last week that, although state Democrats complied with those regulations, the timeframe in which it was conducted was compromised since early voting on the matter was already underway. The party’s unsuccessful counterargument turned to long-standing decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, which has held that even if early voting is underway, an election does not happen until Election Day itself.
Virginians narrowly passed the referendum last month, despite a 2020 state policy that relegated redistricting to 10-year intervals aligned with the national census. Roughly 50.3 percent of the state voted in favor of redrawing the voting map, giving their representatives a chance to squeeze more Democratic seats into the U.S. House at midterms.
The new maps were expected to alter the state’s congressional split to overwhelmingly favor Democrats, switching from a 6–5 split to 10–1.
“The Court overrode the will of the people who ratified the amendment by ordering the Commonwealth to conduct its election with the congressional districts that the people rejected,” wrote lawyers for Virginia Democrats and the state’s Democratic Attorney General Jay Jones, in a statement obtained by the Associated Press. The attorneys added that “the irreparable harm resulting from the Supreme Court of Virginia’s decision is profound and immediate.”
The judicial decision was a major setback for the national liberal party, which had placed enormous weight on Virginia to offset successful Republican redistricting efforts in other areas of the country, such as Texas and Florida. The Supreme Court filing is an act of desperation as the party grasps for various solutions to offset the national Republican advantage heading into the midterm election cycle.
On Saturday, lawmakers met with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to discuss other potential solutions in the wake of the Virginia decision, including a bank-shot proposal to redraw the state’s congressional lines anyway.
Trump “Not in a Rush” to End Hugely Unpopular War as Gas Costs Surge
I guess it’s fine for Donald Trump if Americans struggle?
President Donald Trump accidentally just handed Democrats another sound bite they can use to destroy him.
During an appearance on Fox News Monday, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly was asked to explain Trump’s thinking about high energy prices.
Kelly claimed Trump was “clear-eyed” about the rising gas prices, adding that Iran had been “incredibly decimated” militarily and “totally crippled” economically.
“The president is not in a rush—he has all the cards at his disposal, because he knows that Iran is getting weaker and weaker by the day, while the United States is getting stronger and stronger,” she said.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly on high gas prices: "The president is not in a rush" pic.twitter.com/aD4TGRpJGL—........