Donald Trump’s administration says crews will “immediately” dismantle a massive UFC fighting arena after the end of the president’s 80th birthday match on the White House lawn.
A sworn statement in federal court filings from Joshua Fisher, the director of the White House Office of Administration and assistant to the president, says the “Claw” will be “disassembled immediately” after Sunday’s event, promoted by the president as a celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary.
“Demobilization” of the structure will begin the next morning, Fisher wrote.
The statement — attached in court filings as the Trump administration battles a lawsuit urging a judge to halt construction of the arena — follows the president’s remarks suggesting that the stage could be a permanent fixture on the south lawn.
“We’re building something in front of the White House that’s quite attractive to a lot of people,” he said in a video posted to social media last week. “I’m looking at it and maybe we’ll never ever take it down.”
Another sworn statement from a top parks official said the other UFC structures near the Lincoln Memorial for a pre-fight press conference on Friday and a weigh-in at the Ellipse on Saturday will likely be dismantled shortly after the events.
The structures at the Lincoln Memorial are expected to be removed by Sunday, and equipment around the Ellipse will be removed by June 23, according to Marisa Richardson, chief of the National Mall and Memorial Parks Division of Permits Management in the National Park Service.
Crews are finishing construction of a 92-foot-tall, octagon-shaped stage for Trump’s UFC Freedom 250 event, coinciding with his 80th birthday on June 14.
In a late-night court filing, lawyers for the Department of Justice argued that months of planning, millions of dollars spent, plans arranged by thousands of spectators and intense training among the fighters themselves would all be wasted if a judge intervenes.
“All these hopes could be dashed at the very last moment, however, by the whim of two people who believe they have superior taste and want to spoil the event for everyone else,” government lawyers wrote Tuesday.
“It would be easy enough to simply avert their gazes for the weekend,” the filing says. “Instead, they seek to enlist the power of a federal court to impose their idiosyncratic preferences on the rest of the country and ruin an event designed to celebrate the United States of America.”
A lawsuit from the Public Integrity Project on behalf of two activists argues the president’s “deeply corrupt” event is giving the UFC “what none have enjoyed before: unfettered access to the White House and Lincoln Memorial to stage a private, for-profit sports event, with all the promotional and branding opportunities that accompany such access.”
The UFC is covering the cost of construction, according to Mark Shapiro, president of TKO Group Holdings, UFC’s parent company. The event is expected to cost $60 million, according to court filings, and UFC president Dana White said the organization will spend an additional $700,000 to restore the grass on the White House lawn.
The lawsuit argues the White House is unlawfully constructing the UFC arena without congressional authorization at potential taxpayer expense — all while exploiting public lands for a massive marketing campaign.
The event is sponsored by Singaporean cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com, and other companies are “clambering over each other to see their brands plastered” all over Washington, D.C., according to the lawsuit.
In recent months, Trump has overseen a dramatic transformation of the nation’s capital with a multi-billion dollar package of gilded renovations and new construction catering to his tastes, from the demolition of the East Wing of the White House for a massive ballroom to plans for the world’s largest “triumphal” arch and an overhaul of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
Images of the under-construction UFC ring next to the demolished East Wing have been widely ridiculed as a snapshot of Trump’s wrecking ball approach to D.C.
“The Lincoln Memorial is sacred ground, and it honors everyone who has ever worn this country’s uniform,” said plaintiff Paul Romano, a retired Air Force Sergeant and Vietnam War veteran. “Using it as a backdrop for a for-profit cage fight so the President and his friends can make money is a desecration.”
Plaintiff Susan Douglas said the president has effectively handed “America’s most cherished monuments to a private corporation so he and his allies could profit from them.”
“That is corruption,” she said. “These monuments belong to all of us Americans, not to Dana White, not to advertisers like Crypto.com, and not to Donald Trump.”
