This rules.Kevin Dietsch/Getty
At first, when I saw these photos of curling scaffolding outside the White House, I thought construction was beginning on the Trump Arch. That assumption, however, shows my limited fluency in Donald Trump’s vanity projects.
This is actually something else entirely: a tarantula-like stage being built for the president’s birthday cage fight extravaganza, called UFC Freedom 250. The fights, which will be part of Trump’s America 250 celebration, will reportedly cost $60 million. Trump announced the event last year during a visit to the Iowa State Fair. This summer, it’s happening for real, featuring boxers Ilia Tupuria and Justin Gaethje.
Oh, you didn’t realize a cage fight was happening at the White House soon? Neither did many of us. Here is a list of things that people at the Center for Investigative Reporting’s New York office think the arena, at least in its current iteration, resembles instead:
Alien egg
Elon Musk’s first installation on Mars
Mall bungee jumping setup, near the food court, right around the corner from Claire’s, probably smelling faintly of cheese.
Rollercoaster, but little
Church carnival in a parking lot
The millionth Transformers film
The launch celebration for a new and improved NuvaRing. This one is sort of high-concept, and I don’t really understand it, but I believe my colleagues and here’s a link where you can judge for yourself.
St. Louis Arch (a.k.a The Gateway Arch, but a Lego Technic version.)
McDonald’s Arches.
Installation purpose-built for a mid-sized city’s bid to host the Olympics
I’m no architecture critic, so there’s not much else for me to add here. If tickets to the fight didn’t (reportedly) cost $1.5 million, I’d check it out. I think the Transformers movies are pretty neat, and I think that there are many worse things the president could be wasting his time on than a UFC fight.
