A veteran conservative writer declared President Donald Trump is driving America into an "orgy of decline" after he hosted a UFC fight on the White House lawn.
Bill Kristol, editor-at-large at The Bulwark and founder of the now-defunct Weekly Standard, leveled the charge in a Monday column — the morning after UFC Freedom 250 played out on the South Lawn and Trump announced a ceasefire deal with Iran that Kristol says handed Tehran a victory and left America diminished.
"[W]riting about a defeat for our country is genuinely painful," Kristol wrote.
The deal, Kristol argued, left Iran's regime intact, its missile stockpiles untouched, and billions in unfrozen assets flowing back to Tehran. He leaned on an analysis by Atlantic national security writer Tom Nichols, who wrote that Trump and his team "…in record time, just lost a war to a militarily mediocre — but nonetheless extremely dangerous — adversary."
"Iran comes out a winner," Kristol wrote. "But Iran's victory isn't the most important outcome of Trump's foolish war. The most important outcome is our defeat."
He called the ceasefire "Trump's failure" — one that confirmed America's retreat from its role as guardian of a U.S.-friendly international order. "This failed war," he wrote, "will leave us both less feared and less respected than before."
The timing sharpened his indictment. The deal dropped the same night as the cage match — a coincidence Kristol called a symptom of "imperial decadence," invoking the Roman poet Juvenal's lament about bread and circuses. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found just 16 percent of Americans thought the White House fight was appropriate (margin of error: 2 points).
"Our decline," Kristol wrote, "shows every likelihood of being far quicker and more thorough than Rome's."