‘Reeks of corruption’: protesters rally as Trump hosts UFC event on his birthday

Dozens of people stood across the entrance gates to the Ellipse, the park south of the White House, on Sunday afternoon, holding protest signs and chanting as the president prepared to host seven mixed martial arts fights on the lawn.

Thousands of fight fans streamed past the protesters into the sprawling public viewing area that the Trump administration and the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), which is hosting the fights, erected steps from the White House. The cage fights, marketed as a celebration of the country’s “fighting spirit” ahead of its 250th anniversary, are being held on Donald Trump’s 80th birthday.

Protesters held a large puppet cage of oversized figures of Trump and his cabinet members, a piece of street theater that drew looks from tourists and boos from UFC spectators.

“This reeks of corruption – way too much corruption,” said Susan Douglas, an organizer with Third Act Virginia, the progressive pro-democracy grassroots organization that organized the demonstration. “Let’s face it,” she added. “It’s for Trump’s birthday and has nothing to do with the founding of our country.”

Douglas was one of two plaintiffs in an emergency federal lawsuit brought by the Public Integrity Project, an anti-corruption non-profit, seeking to block the UFC event entirely. But just two days earlier, Douglas learned that a federal judge had rejected the lawsuit. “I’m just appalled,” Douglas said, watching the crowd flow past.

Thousands of UFC fans and Trump supporters stood behind two rows of barricades on Constitution Avenue as they waited to enter the viewing area at 15th Street. As protesters walked by with signs, chanting “Whose house? Our house!” and “Whose lawn? Our lawn!” Trump fans replied: USA! USA! UFC! UFC!”

The afternoon rally, organized under the banner “The Real Fight Is for Democracy,” was one of several demonstrations that played out across Washington DC and the country as Trump hosted the first private, for-profit sporting event ever held on White House grounds.

Protesters said that they opposed the event for a variety of reasons, including that Trump holds significant stock in TKO, the UFC’s parent company, and that that event commercializes federal park lands. Others opposed the inherently violent nature of the event, claiming that a cage fight was inappropriate for federal property, especially as the US continues to fight wars abroad.

Protesters with Third Act erected a cage and puppet heads to represent Trump and his cabinet. The bamboo cage doesn’t represent a UFC cage, but a jail cell where the Washington protesters said Trump and his allies belong. Photograph: Fabiola Cineas/The Guardian

Fighters will emerge from the Oval Office and walk to a 92-ft-tall steel cage known as “the Claw” on the South Lawn, while VIP guests who had paid up to $1.5m for access watch from ringside.

“[The Claw] is not the least bit stately,” Douglas said. “It doesn’t fit with the beautiful architecture of our city. The people’s house should not be used for a money-making sports event. Full stop.”

“We just wanted to show what an awful group of people this administration is,” said Marco Smith, a member of Third Act Virginia who led the construction of the cage and puppets. “We made the cage to show them behind bars where they belong – not in the UFC cage, but in a jail cage.”

As the UFC fans entered the gates to the viewing event, they booed the protesters and chanted Trump’s name. The protesters screamed back: “No national guard!”, “free DC!” and “No hate! No fear! Immigrants are welcome here!”.

“This is a fascist, money-grabbing opportunity,” said Jason Simpson, a protester who banged a gong at the UFC fans and traveled from Connecticut to join the protest. “We need to keep fighting back,” he said, explaining that he attended protests outside of Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey in the past few weeks where he was pepper-sprayed by police and beaten with a baton.

As protests carried on, the sound of sport bikes revving could be heard over the steel fences where the crowd entered. Hundreds of law enforcement officials, including the national guard, Metropolitan police, Park police and Secret Service, patrolled the area on foot, horseback, motorcycles, and from tanks and other armored vehicles.

A few blocks away, a different kind of action is under way. Roughly 100 people gathered at the Wilson Building on Pennsylvania Avenue – brought together by Code Pink, the feminist anti-war organization, alongside the Federal Unionist Network, DC Ward 2 Mutual Aid, and the DC Local to Global Solidarity Network – before moving toward the fight area at Constitution and 15th for a community meal and programming under the banner “They Fight, We Feed”.

As UFC fans waited in line, they chanted ‘USA! UFC!’ while protesters held a sign that read ‘USA NOT UFC’ to signal their disapproval of the Trump-hosted cage fights. Photograph: Fabiola Cineas/The Guardian

For Olivia DiNucci, an anti-militarism organizer with CodePink who helped lead the evening’s action, the UFC fight was not just a birthday party or a corruption scheme. It was a symptom of something deeper.

“We are calling out how this is already a very militarized city, and now we have people fighting each other on the South Lawn and trying to elicit fear and violence, like they do all over the world,” DiNucci said. “We need a world of peace and caring for each other and nurturing each other.”

The group raised funds for local organizations and laid out a community meal, drawing a deliberate contrast with what was happening a few hundred yards away. The connection between military spending and hunger, DiNucci said, was not incidental.

“We are about to sign a $1.5tn Pentagon budget – the highest Pentagon budget we’ve ever had, the highest DHS budget we’ve ever had – and the biggest cuts to social safety nets,” she said. “Whenever people say, ‘How do we pay for this?’ I tell them that poverty is violence in this country. The fact that we have endless money for war and for weapons isn’t surprising when you then see how much war and violence are glorified in the backdrop with something like this UFC fight.”

DiNucci added: “It’s absolutely horrifying that people in this country go to bed every night not knowing where the next meal will be, when weapons manufacturers are making a killing off of killing. Elon Musk is now the world’s first trillionaire. That should never ever exist in a world where people are being starved to death and bombed to death.”

Sunday’s action was part of a broader season of counter-programming, DiNucci said. “Our protest today is just one of the ways that people are pushing back against this false narrative of Freedom 250 all summer,” she said. “We are building out counter-programming to juxtapose supernationalism, fascism and militarism.”

As the main card gets under way on the South Lawn, the Committee for the First Amendmentwill begin Rise Up, Sing Out: A Concert for the First Amendment, a 90-minute program featuring Bette Midler, Patti Smith, Rufus Wainwright, Jane Fonda, Julia Roberts, Joy Reid, Lily Gladstone and others. The concert will stream live to more than 500 watch parties organized by the No Kings Coalition and Indivisible.

“We can let strongman politics and corruption define the moment,” No Kings said in a statement. “Or we can make the story of America about people coming together – across race, background, identity, belief and community – to defend our rights and build a future rooted in people power.”