Workers are building a 4,500-seat cage fight arena on the White House South Lawn, but the A-list guests Donald Trump hoped would fill it are staying away. The Freedom 250 Ultimate Fighting Championship extravaganza, scheduled for 14 June — Trump’s 80th birthday — is haemorrhaging celebrities, much like the concurrent Great American State Fair concerts that saw headliners pull out one by one.
The event comes after the epic disaster that followed Trump's air assault on Iran — a move almost everyone knew would empower Tehran by handing it pretext to shut the Strait of Hormuz, which prior administrations had avoided. Now, the cage fight is facing its own credibility crisis.
“Celebrities snub Trump's Freedom 250 cage fight on his 80th birthday, with Sandler, Leto and The Rock declining invites.”
UFC president Dana White told Time magazine that 300 invitations were sent out, with names such as Adam Sandler, Jared Leto, Jason Statham, Guy Ritchie, Tom Brady and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson on the guest list. Yet the talent appears to have no intention of showing up. A source close to The Rock told Vanity Fair that he will not attend, and representatives for Sandler and Leto have confirmed they will not be present.
No one knows who will actually show up, but on the A-list front it is shaping up as another booking disaster for the Trump administration and its public-private partnered celebrations. Freedom 250 is funded through a public-private partnership with money from Trump-aligned tech firms Palantir and Oracle and federal contractors Deloitte and Lockheed Martin, among others. It has faced growing scrutiny from watchdog groups and members of Congress over the use of federal dollars for Trump-aligned events. Consumer advocacy group Public Citizen has called for congressional investigations after The New York Times reported that donors to Freedom 250 were offered access to the president if they donated $1 million.
A recent YouGov survey found that 51 per cent of Americans disapprove of the cage fight celebration, with many viewing the event as a party for Trump rather than a true 250-year celebration of the US.