The UFC may have paid for the cage, but that wasn’t the only cost.
Last night’s event, Trump’s birthday present to himself, reportedly involved support from more than seven federal agencies, military flyovers, and an estimated $10–12 million in supplemental security costs.
Taxpayers may not have paid for the arena, but they were still paying plenty for the spectacle around it.
This is the same political movement that spent months celebrating DOGE-style austerity and helped derail a spending package that included funds for the Gabriella Miller Kids First pediatric research initiative.
We’re constantly told the government can’t afford programs that serve the people.
Can’t afford medical research.
Can’t afford programs for children.
Can’t afford investments that save lives.
Yet somehow there’s money for fighter jets, security operations, and presidential vanity projects.
And that is the part they want people to miss.
The cage is only one line item. The real story is the entire machinery of government being bent around one man’s spectacle: the agencies, the military pageantry, the public space, the official imprimatur of the White House.
Nobody is claiming the UFC event literally took money out of a pediatric cancer fund.
The point is that spending is about priorities.
And the right’s priorities are grossly out of whack.