Raymond J. de Souza: White House cage match is emblematic of Trump presidency

Final preparations are underway on the Ellipse for the Ultimate Fighting Championship Freedom 250 Fan Fest event on June 12, 2026 in Washington, D.C. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

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On June 14, President Donald Trump will mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence with a mixed martial arts cage fight on the South Lawn of the White House. It will be his 80th birthday, hence the chosen date.

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Trump, though very unlike his predecessors, is an extension of the boomer domination of the American presidency. The boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, had their first president in Bill Clinton, born August 1946. He was succeeded by the one-month-older George W. Bush, born July 1946. Trump, slightly older still, is the third two-term president born in 1946. Barack Obama was a younger boomer, born August 1961.

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The only non-boomer president in the last 33 years was Joe Biden. He is too old (!) to be a boomer, born in November 1942.

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Gladiators were not in the pre-Trump plan for celebrating the Declaration of Independence. Perhaps he will watch from the Truman balcony, delivering a thumbs-up or -down upon the proceedings. Bloodsport for entertainment and civic uplift has a rather more imperial vibe than that of republican virtue.

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No Kings, declared the founding fathers in 1776. But why not a Caesar in 2026?

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Nevertheless, the rebellious spirit of 1776 seems alive in Washington. On Wednesday it was discovered that a massive “86 47” had been somehow browned into the grass of the National Mall between the Washington Monument and the World War II Memorial. Trump’s Justice Department had previously charged former FBI director James Comey for posting — and then removing — a picture of seashells arranged in the “86 47” format, implausibly claiming that it was a threat to assassinate (“86”) the 47th president.

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Given the relative size of the seashells to the numerals in the grass, and the location right under the president’s nose, Trump’s prosecutors will undoubtedly charge the perpetrators with treason, and thus open them to the possibility of death by firing squad, an American tradition recently restored by 47. In deploying a thoroughly corrupt justice system against his political enemies, Trump is not a disruptor. Indeed, Americans have long history of what is now called lawfare, as venerably used by Thomas Jefferson against Aaron Burr in 1807. Injustice in the name of justice is more American than apple pie, older than the anthem which sings of the land of the free.

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The Interior Department has called the grass-fiti an act of “deranged vandalism.” Deranged or not, vandalism seems suitable now for the National Mall, complementing the vandalism at the White House itself, decorated in late-Saddam gilded style, perched over the enormous hole where the East Wing used to be.

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As the president meets his more than three-score-and-ten or “eighty for those who are strong” (Psalm 90), it is a fitting time to ask about the impact of the man on his country.

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The case has been made that Trump’s policies are sufficiently wise that his style ought not be considered dispositive in rendering a negative judgment on his presidency.

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It is a case made by reasonable people in these pages. I am not persuaded.

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I don’t support his preference for higher taxes (tariffs), high spending, high debt; I don’t support his protectionism; I don’t support his alliance-shredding foreign policy; I don’t support performative cruelty against immigrants, including citizens; I don’t support his taking the gangster’s side against the brave Ukrainians. His real estate developer diplomatic envoys have visited Moscow eight times, but have refused to set foot in Kyiv.