The plan was simple. Trump turns 80 on Sunday. The UFC builds a cage on the White House South Lawn. Adam Sandler comes. Tom Brady comes. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson comes. The country gets a birthday party and a president gets a cultural moment. Simple.
Dana White, the UFC’s CEO and a longtime Trump friend, announced the celebrity guest list with some fanfare. It included Sandler, Brady, The Rock, Jason Statham, Jared Leto, Guy Ritchie, and Mario Lopez. The implication was that Hollywood had finally decided Trump was worth showing up for.
Then Vanity Fair asked around. A source close to Johnson said he will not attend. Representatives for Sandler, Leto, and Lopez confirmed they will not attend. Brady has not confirmed attendance. Of Dana White’s marquee celebrity list, per Vanity Fair, “few, if any, will actually be there.”
The National Mall concert scheduled alongside the event collapsed separately when the lineup walked out. Bret Michaels, Milli Vanilli, and Martina McBride were among the performers who cited Trump’s partisanship and pulled out. Trump canceled the concert and said he did not want them anyway. “They’re boring,” he told New York Post columnist Miranda Devine. “I don’t even want them.”
The guest list that the New York Post eventually reported consists, per sources close to the family, of Melania Trump, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Eric and Lara Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and his new wife Bettina, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who is returning from maternity leave for the occasion. There will also be military service members, 5,000 invited guests, and 85,000 people watching on screens on the Ellipse.
The cage is built. The $60 million has been spent. Two legitimate title fights are on the card: Ilia Topuria versus Justin Gaethje, and Alex Pereira versus Ciryl Gane. Those are real fights. The event will happen.
It is just that the birthday party for the most famous man in America is being attended primarily by the people legally obligated to come anyway.
When the most powerful person on earth throws himself a $60 million birthday party and the guest list is family, what exactly did the $60 million buy?
Sources
Fox News: Trump shows renderings for UFC White House event
HuffPost: Celebrity invitees to Trump’s UFC event
