We begin with a clip from the June 14 2026 UFC event on the White House Lawn, in which MMA fighter Josh Hokit declares that Jesus Christ is greater than Hulk Hogan and Michelle Obama is a man.
Our theme music this week is Kung Fu Fighting by Carl Douglas, copyrighted music licensed from Lickd.
President Donald J. Trump and Dana White, President and CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship at the mixed martial arts event on Sunday, June 14, 2026, on the South Lawn of the White House. Photo credit: Andrea Hanks/Wikimedia Commons
In the News:
Georgia had its primary on Tuesday: health care executive Rick Jackson beat out Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones, and incumbent Senate Democrat Jon Ossoff got the opponent he wants: extremist Mike Collins. Ossoff also got an obscene new nickname from Donald Trump, who has now dubbed a sitting senator Jon Oss(jerk)off. The Jones loss is being read as an upset and a defeat for Trump, since the President endorsed him: but is it really? Since Jackson claims to be embracing a softer version of MAGA, that would mean that Trump, and the movement that brought him to power, are becoming two different things. In other news from The Peach State, election denier Vernon Jones lost his bid to represent the GOP on the Secretary of State ballot line.
Could the District of Columbia be putting a Democratic Socialist mayor right in Donald Trump’s back yard. It looks like it! Democrat Janeese Lewis George has took an early double-digit lead in the primary to replace centrist Muriel Bowser, and never let go of it: her opponent, Kenyan McDuffie, conceded earlier today. Lewis George currently represents Ward 4 on the D.C. Council—and as we know, the Democratic primary is basically the whole race.
Republicans have told us nonstop that cuts to the social safety net are just about fraud and waste, but ProPublica reports that as of this week, over 770,000 children have been cut from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), born in 1939 as a New Deal program commonly known as food stamps. Altogether, almost 1.7 million people have been dropped from federal food assistance using a common tactic: increasing the paperwork necessary to receive the benefit.
In yet another attack on LGBTQ+ people timed for Pride Month, on June 12, the Department of Veterans Affairs ordered VA hospitals to end gender-identity based initiatives, and to dismantle networks and services designed to support LGBTQ+ veterans. This includes mental health and cognitive behavioral health programs designed to help former service people cope with homophobia, as well as removing the presence of LGBT+ folks from the website.
Your hosts:
Claire Potter is a historian of politics and media, a writer, a podcaster, and the sole author and editor of the Political Junkie Substack. Her most recent book is Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), and she is currently writing a biography of feminist journalist Susan Brownmiller.
Neil J. Young is a historian of religion and politics, a journalist, and a former co-host of the Past Present podcast. His most recent book is Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (University of Chicago Press, 2024).
Podcaster Joe Rogan interviews UFC Fighter Ilia Topuria at the ceremonial UFC Freedom 250 weigh-ins on the Ellipse, Saturday, June 13, 2026. Photo credit: Sgt. 1st Class Brittany Primavera/Wikimedia Commons.
News focus:
On Sunday, Donald Trump celebrated his own birthday and launched a series of events intended to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence with an Ultimate Fighting Championship mixed-martial arts extravaganza on the White House lawn. It cost at least $60 million, which is said to have been absorbed by sponsors and by the UFC (Dana White, the CEO of the UFC, is a long-time friend of Trump’s.) It’s unclear whether this includes the $700,000 in security provided by the District of Columbia Police.
First of all, what is the UFC—and why do Trump—and other MAGA celebrities like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk—identify with it? The audience is largely male, and Trump has been involved with the sport since 2001, when he owned the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. UFC has also been welcomed to David Ellison’s new CBS: a televised event three months ago drew almost 2,5 million viewers. The UFC is worth over $1 billion, and has an overwhelmingly male audience.
The event sparks memories of other Presidents staging other controversial events at the White House. In 1837, Andrew Jackson installed a 1,600-pound block of cheese in the entrance hall of the White House and invited “the people” to come in and hack away at it; Jackson’s inauguration also turned into a riot, where the guests refused to leave and had to be lured out of the building with ice cream and whiskey punch. During the Senate inquiry into the Teapot Dome Scandal that began in 1923, it was revealed that President Warren G. Harding held smokers in the White House that featured illegal alcohol and fight films. In a different vein, Theodore Roosevelt was at the center of an uproar when he invited Booker T. Washington to dine with him at the White House. And there have been several presidents who have been characterized as rubes: Abraham Lincoln, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton spring to mind.
The New York Times’s Michelle Goldberg, thought it was significant that the UFC fight occurred on the same day that a memorandum of understanding was signed with Iran to end a needless and unprovoked war that has left the United States, and the world, in a worse position than it was before the conflict. Both things, she argues, indicate the nation’s decline. Here’s what the MOU says (it pretty much gives Iran everything they might want in exchange for nothing.)
There are risks to having high-profile events at the White House: the FBI claims to have made four arrests of people allegedly conspiring to attack the event with explosive drones. Apparently the investigation is ongoing: as usual, Keystone Kash announced it, presumably to nudge the Secret Service, which owns the operation, out of the limelight. Fourteen other people were arrested at the event for crimes like disorderly conduct and drug possession.
Hope Reeves, a liberal journalist, wrote about taking her teenage sons to the event, and their love for UFC fighting: what’s the argument about this being an entertainment for kids that isn’t so terrible?
What we want to go viral:
Neil wants you to read Matt Flegenheimer, “New Yorkers Are Living in a Peculiar Harmony. Thank the Knicks” (New York Times, May 29, 2026).
Claire wants you to read Claire Hoffman’s “The Gospel of Erika Kirk: Leaning In with the Christian Women of TPUSA” (Rolling Stone, June 13, 2026).
You can also get all audio content for free by subscribing on Apple iTunes, YouTube, or Spotify.
.jpg){kind=link}