Fight House Lawn
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 11 June 2026
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How Donald Trump rearranging the White House lawn to accommodate a UFC fight neatly mirrors the way the organization and its parent company have reshaped themselves around the president.
Guest: Luke Thomas, MMA journalist and host of the Morning Kombat podcast.
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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, Madeline Ducharme, Patrick Fort, Rob Gunther and Paige Osburn.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If you're like me, you have seen a whole lot of pictures of what's happening on the White House lawn these days. |
| 0:13.2 | And these images are not being framed in the most flattering way. |
| 0:17.9 | President Trump is floating the idea of making his big UFC arena on the White |
| 0:22.6 | House South Lawn a permanent installment. You can see the structure. These pictures show what's |
| 0:27.9 | being called the claw, a massive metal structure snaking into the sky. It's got neon lights, |
| 0:35.2 | stars, stripes. And it is where this Sunday, President Trump will host a series of UFC fights, |
| 0:42.9 | ostensibly for Flag Day, but the 14th also happens to be his birthday. |
| 0:47.1 | Your president at the White House is erecting a 90-foot-tall. |
| 0:51.2 | She used to be the East Wing. |
| 0:54.0 | I mean, this image right here reveals both |
| 0:57.1 | the president's priorities while people pay more for gas and we're at war and just the kind of |
| 1:02.4 | chaotic situation you get when you don't have oversight and you don't have a Congress that |
| 1:07.1 | has really enforced anything. So the president can just demol- |
| 1:10.9 | The jokes about this structure are abundant. |
| 1:13.8 | I'll admit, I chuckled when someone said, |
| 1:16.1 | it looked like there was now six flags at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. |
| 1:20.5 | But when I called up podcaster and reporter Luke Thomas, |
| 1:24.1 | he said, for MMA, this spectacle is not new. |
| 1:29.5 | People just want good fights, right? |
| 1:31.4 | They just want good fights. |
| 1:32.4 | And what they want with good fights is they want big atmosphere. |
| 1:35.4 | For example, a few weeks ago, one of the very best boxers in the world, a Ukrainian guy |
... |
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