They came to see the Claw.
The White House welcomed reporters and influencers from around the world onto the South Lawn for half an hour on Thursday morning to inspect the towering, claw-like superstructure that has been built there for the Ultimate Fighting Championship bout that President Trump is hosting on his 80th birthday this weekend.
While the president sat inside the White House, fulminating about the war in Iran — “We will be taking Kharg Island,” he threatened online — dozens of people wandered dazedly inside the monsterama he built out back, trying to get a sense for how Sunday’s showdown will play out. It is sure to be a night unlike any other in Washington history.
Jack Posobiec, the right-wing commentator best known for spreading the “Pizzagate” paranoia, stood with a White House official next to the octagonal ring down in the nexus of the claw and looked around in awe. “It’s literally Vegas,” Mr. Posobiec said excitedly. “Vegas is in D.C. now!”
The official pointed to the clusters of klieg lights affixed to each of the four curving appendages high overhead, explaining that this would all look much more dramatic after dark. Each individual light has the ability to swivel independently of the others, laserlike. People will see the great, coruscating claw from all the way across the Potomac River, out in Arlington, Va., the official said with some pride.
Massive television screens hanging from every corner, the star-spangled jumbo claw coexists strangely with the rest of its environs. It towers over the old willow oaks and magnolia trees planted long ago by past presidents on the gentle slope of the South Lawn. It towers over the White House itself. Spectators seated in the topmost section on Sunday night will be on eye level with the Truman balcony.
“Everybody get down from the octagon, please!” an official yelled at a flock of reporters clamoring to get inside the cage where men will soon beat one another to a pulp. The cage itself was an eight-sided feat of marketeering, its every angle prominently displaying the name of some sponsor who’d paid big bucks to have their brands juxtaposed against the ultimate backdrop: Live Trade on Polymarket … Bud Light … Pit Boss Grills … Total Wireless … Dial #Law Morgan & Morgan … Toyo Tires.
The words “crypto.com” were carved into each little metal step leading into the ring.
Men wearing hard hats and tool belts walked around, taking measurements, assembling velvet rope lines and unpacking pallets containing more black folding chairs. Small signs applied with an adhesive to the back of every seat read, “Warning: Please Do Not Stand on Chair.” Members of the United States Marine Band plugged in amplifiers and put together drum sets in one corner set up like an orchestra pit.
Presidential historians say there are no parallels from the past for what Mr. Trump has planned for Sunday.
“President Reagan had Michael Deaver, who was great at doing stagecraft, setting up backdrops for Reagan to give memorable speeches,” the historian Douglas Brinkley said, “but Trump’s turning the White House into some kind of high-energy drink, Hulk Hogan commercial.”
Maybe it’s what’s to be expected from a president who operated casinos in Atlantic City and owned Miss Universe and Miss USA and appeared as himself on WrestleMania and in a Pizza Hut commercial with his ex-wife promoting stuffed-crust pies. Standing in the claw’s clutches, one is reminded vaguely of a Six Flags with notes of Evel Knievel.
Plenty of people enjoy that sort of thing and will tune in on Sunday. “We’re expecting Super Bowl-type numbers for this fight,” U.F.C.’s chief executive, Dana White, has said.
Mr. Trump has always been in touch with the American tabloid sensibility — it was such an important factor in how he rose to power — and there is something about the claw that feels like the culmination of his decades-long journey through this country’s appetites.
But in other ways, the claw seems wildly out of touch. According to a new poll by Reuters and Ipsos published Thursday, just 16 percent of Americans said it was “appropriate” for Mr. Trump to hold this fight — it will actually be seven fights — at the White House this weekend. It seems a provocative, P.T. Barnum-esque gambit for the president to be pulling at a time of high gas prices, low poll numbers and open war. On Wednesday, he said, “I love the inflation.” Two weeks ago he said, “I don’t care about the midterms.”
All this while he oversaw the construction of a 600-ton steel arch on the South Lawn of the people’s house.
An Australian sports reporter named Matthew Johns who’d traveled all the way from Sydney looked up at it while laughing to himself. “It’s incredible,” he said. “It’s unbelievable!”
Did he think it was a little trashy?
“It’s not my country, and he’s not my president,” he said with a smile. “I’m just here for a good time.”
