Above all things, the Ulitmate Fighting Championship spectacle on the White House lawn on Sunday was Donald Trump’s birthday present to himself. The self-proclaimed “Greatest President in History” once again reminded the public that the only record he’ll set is in White House corruption, using the fight both to line his own pockets and enrich his billionaire benefactors. But if the 80-year-old was hoping that proximity to half-naked men punching each other would make him look more robust and virile, the opposite happened. Despite the dramatic music and his ever-thickening foundation application, Trump looked frail and his ever-present hand bruise was hard to ignore, despite the efforts to cover it with makeup.
The painful event was an almost too-perfect symbol of the larger problem infecting Trump’s White House: it’s run by men obsessed with looking tough, but who are, in actuality, weak and incompetent. The more they fail, the more they grasp for these theatrical but ineffectual displays of masculine preening, hoping that the public mistakes loud and violent displays for strength. This may fool the hardcore MAGA base into perpetuity, but increasingly, it’s becoming evident to everyone else that all the chest-pounding theatrics are just a cover to conceal the weakness that defines MAGA manhood.
