Commentary: What a surprise: Trump's UFC Freedom 250 birthday bash was MAGA propaganda (plus fights)

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Well, that just happened.The president held a cage fight on the White House South Lawn, complete with flyovers, fireworks, mini-skirted “octagon girls” and the surrealistic sight of mixed martial arts fighters striding through historic White House rooms flanked by National Medal of Honor winners.Despite wide public disapproval for Sunday’s event and much scathing commentary about the political and psychological messaging of Donald Trump’s choice of a Vegas-like spectacle to celebrate his 80th birthday, and the country’s 250th, the sky did not fall, the original Constitution in the nearby National Archives did not tear in two and none of the fighters passed out from the heat or bug bites.

Things didn’t even get bloody until the final match in the fifth hour, when Justin Gaethje kicked and punched the crap out of widely favored Ilia Topuria.Even so, it was impossible to emerge from watching UFC Freedom 250 without feeling punch-drunk.Not because of the fighting; because of almost everything that was not the fighting.

Hollywood Inc.As expected, the U.S.

Justice Department gave its consent for the blockbuster merger expected to reshape Hollywood.Beginning with Paramount+, owned by the Trump-friendly Ellison family’s Paramount Skydance, which recently received Justice Department clearance for its highly controversial acquisition of Warner Bros.

Discovery.The jarring sight of past UFC matches being seemingly projected onto the Jefferson Memorial and the Capitol gave way to a series of poorly produced “historical” moments in which UFC fighters were cast as inheriting the same “fighting spirit” that motivated this nation’s Founding Fathers, past presidents and war veterans.

Down to the inevitable strains of the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” (the baffling anthem of MAGA), the event projected a macho-man view of patriotism that was just as ghastly as m...