When Dana White stepped onto The Pat McAfee Show to defend his upcoming Freedom 250 event at the White House, he stated that the spectacle had nothing to do with politics. Not everyone is buying that.
Mike Nellis is a former Senior Advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris and the founder of Authentic, a marketing agency that has raised over $1 billion for Democratic candidates and progressive causes. He posted a video on social media, declaring that the UFC functions as a propaganda machine for Donald Trump.
Nellis, who also co-founded the viral White Dudes for Harris movement in 2020 and has advised more than 400 organizations across the political and nonprofit landscape, knows how political messaging is assembled.
White, speaking with McAfee, characterized Freedom 250 as a patriotic celebration meant to honor the nation’s 250th birthday.
“I don’t care if you’re far right, far left, right down the middle, wherever you sit politically, because everybody sits somewhere politically these days,” White said. “This isn’t about politics. This is about the United States. What this country is about, how it was built, where we all came from.”
He continued: “If you love America, you’re going to love this event. It has nothing to do with politics. We just happen to be on the White House lawn and the president of the United States will be there.”
But the details surrounding the event tell a different story, according to critics. The card is scheduled on a Sunday, a notable departure from the UFC’s longstanding practice of holding events on Fridays and Saturdays. That scheduling choice, observers argue, was no coincidence.
Nellis stated,”They thought it would be cool as s**t for Donald Trump to be able to look like a king and have a gladiator style match in front of the White House. It’s a disgusting use of our government is a disgusting use of a landmark in the White House.”
“They made an intentional decision to plan a UFC event in front of the White House on Trump’s birthday and have the audacity to tell you that it’s not political,” he remarked. “They have the audacity to tell you that it’s out of the goodness of their hearts.”
Additionally, White personally escorted the president into the event at UFC 327, a gesture critics say speaks volumes about the organization’s relationship with the current administration.
While the crowd response was notably more restrained than at previous Trump appearances at UFC events, the optics were unmistakable.
“What you see here is a consolidation of power and money and influence and access to the American people,” Nellis observed. “That is all designed to make it harder for you to find the truth, to make it harder for you to ever hear anything negative about the president of the United States because he wants to be a king.”
Also, the event was broadcast on Paramount Plus, a platform whose parent company was recently acquired by individuals described as close political allies of the president, a deal that also handed those investors control over CBS News.
Critics have raised serious alarms about what that concentration of media ownership means for editorial independence and the public’s ability to access unfiltered information.
During his conversation with McAfee, White flatly rejected the suggestion that public funds were underwriting the spectacle. “We’re paying the entire bill on all of this. Everything that you’re seeing, not one dollar of taxpayer money will go into this,” White said. “This is the UFC’s gift to the 250th birthday of America.”
