The Birthday Party and the Bill the Rest of Us Are Paying
Most of us don’t think of the South Lawn of the White House. We will this week. Not because it’s the spot where hundreds of kids roll eggs at Easter but because it’s where crews are bolting together a steel cage big enough to seat thousands of people. On June 14, which happens to be the president’s 80th birthday, that cage will host a UFC card sold to us as a tribute to the country turning 250. He has even floated keeping the thing up forever, comparing his lawn cage to the Eiffel Tower.
Is he kidding?
According to a YouGov survey conducted last week, 51% of us disapprove of the White House hosting the fight, while only 27% approve. Among independents, the voters who tend to decide elections, the gap is even wider, with 55% disapproving and just 18% on board.
That distance, between what he is building and what we are living, is the whole story right now.
Walk it forward. While crews weld a fighting cage onto the lawn, families are doing nervous math in the grocery aisle. And the people who handed this president his second term are noticing. According to a bipartisan poll released May 27 by UnidosUS, the nation’s largest Latino civil rights organization, 67% of Hispanic voters now disapprove of his job performance. In Florida, a state he carried and loved to brag about, disapproval among Latino voters sits at 51%. Most striking of all, 25% of the Hispanic voters who chose him in 2024 say they would not do it again. According to the same group, that number climbed from 9% last April to 13% in November to a full quarter today.
Ask them why, and, of course, nobody brings up a cage match. They have other pressing matters on their minds. According to that UnidosUS poll, the issues top-of-mind for these voters are the cost of living and inflation, named by 44%, immigration enforcement in their neighborhoods, named by 33%, stagnant jobs and wages at 26%, and the war in Iran at 25%. These are people drawing a straight line between the choices coming out of Washington and the squeeze they feel every single week.
Now set that beside what the president chose to do on national television this weekend. Sitting with NBC’s Kristen Welker for an interview that aired Sunday, he was asked for evidence that California’s election was rigged. He offered none. He called the reporter crooked, called her network crooked, and when she kept pressing, he pulled off his microphone, said he had enough, and walked out. The Democratic frontrunner there, Xavier Becerra, had simply advanced to November through California’s ordinary and admittedly slow vote count.
In that same conversation, he defended a fund carrying a price tag of 1.776 billion dollars that could end up compensating people who pleaded guilty to assaulting police officers on January 6. He suggested the rioters were ushered into the Capitol by the FBI. There is no evidence for that either.
So here is the full picture. A leader pours his attention into a birthday spectacle, into relitigating an election he already won, and into the idea of cutting checks to people who attacked the Capitol. Meanwhile the coalition that elected him is telling pollsters, in growing numbers, that they want help with rent and groceries and a Congress that actually does its job. According to UnidosUS, 84% of Hispanic voters worry that Congress is handing too much power to the president.
November answers all of it. The cage will come down eventually, whatever he says about the Eiffel Tower. The real question is whether we keep watching the lawn or start watching our own lives. The polling suggests we already know the difference. Now we vote like it. Go beyond the headlines…
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