President Donald Trump's "Freedom250" UFC match on the White House lawn was a massive display of weakness, Salon's Amanda Marcotte argued in an analysis published on Wednesday — and it reveals the true insecurity of the MAGA psyche.
The whole movement, she said, is "run by men obsessed with looking tough, but who are, in actuality, weak and incompetent. The more they fail, the more they grasp for these theatrical but ineffectual displays of masculine preening, hoping that the public mistakes loud and violent displays for strength." It gets eaten up by the MAGA faithful, she said, but the rest of America can easily see it for what it is.
On one hand, "the guys in the cage can punch really hard and knock each other out," she said — but on the other hand, they "live in what appears to be daily terror that the slightest misstep — getting caught cooing over a kitten or shaking their hips to a Beyoncé tune — will emasculate them."
The ugly smear of former first lady Michelle Obama's physical appearance put on display at that match by fighter Josh Hokit, she said, is part and parcel of the phenomenon: "he’s a pathetic coward, so threatened by a strong, capable woman that his fear is all he can think about in what was supposed to be a big night in his life."
All of this, she noted, is also occurring against the backdrop of Trump making a massive surrender in his war against Iran and trying to save face over it.
"Trump will try to square that circle by using his usual reality show tactics to create an illusion of victory while turning tail and running," she wrote, but it doesn't change the fact that he blew all four of his objectives going into the war and is leaving the United States and its allies in a worse geopolitical position than they were before the shots were fired.
The "sexist weakness" on display at the UFC bout, she concluded, is a typical MAGA tendency for "confusing violence with strength," and there's a through-line from it to how Iran and all of America's other recent failed wars turned out. "The MAGA concept of manhood is so tied up in these childish views about violence and domination that they are incapable of learning anything. Learning is itself viewed with suspicion, as an emasculating enterprise best avoided for more punching and bragging."