From Bread and Circuses to Just Circuses, an MMA Fight on the White House Lawn Is a Circus Meant to Distract from Epstein
- john raymond
- Sep 5
- 2 min read
The United States once built its legitimacy on the promise of self-government, economic opportunity, and serious policy to secure the future of its people. Today, the Trump administration substitutes spectacle for substance. An announcement that the White House will host a UFC cage fight on the South Lawn next year is not a governing act—it is a circus act.
In Rome, emperors at least paired gladiatorial displays with bread, using subsidies to keep the poor fed while distracting them with games. What we are offered now is only the spectacle, with no bread in sight.
The latest jobs report confirms the truth: just 22,000 jobs added in August, unemployment at its highest in nearly four years, and downward revisions revealing the labor market is weakening across sectors. American families are falling behind. Instead of action to stabilize the economy, the White House is staging a cage fight.
The circus is not random. It serves a purpose. Each headline about a UFC fight on the South Lawn displaces headlines about Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Each minute of airtime showing weigh-ins at the Lincoln Memorial is a minute not spent asking why more than a hundred victims have yet to see justice.
Each glowing profile of fighters touring the Oval Office is a diversion from the corruption at the heart of this presidency.
Some commentators dismiss this line of critique as “Epstein derangement syndrome,” as though noticing a pattern of distraction is itself the delusion. But there is nothing deranged about recognizing that a president implicated in scandal prefers to generate noise rather than face scrutiny.
The fight on the White House lawn is not a patriotic celebration. It is a stage-managed diversion, timed to blot out everything else.
The facts are simple: jobs are collapsing, families are hurting, and the president is offering not bread and circuses, but only circuses.
And maybe not everything Trump and his goons are up to is a distraction from Epstein—but we can say with certainty that this circus is.
Comments