The weather forecast for Trump's White House UFC fight on Sunday looks perfect — for gnats.
UFC Freedom 250 kicks off at 8 p.m. ET on the South Lawn of the White House, with The Weather Channel now putting the chance of rain at 78 percent — thunderstorms possible in the afternoon and carrying into the evening. Temperatures will hit 90 degrees around 5 p.m. Journalist David Shuster flagged the overlap on X on Wednesday evening.
"High humidity, temps reaching 90 around 5 pm, 50% chance of rain/thunder between 6 pm - 8 pm," Shuster wrote on X. "Perfect timing for White House UFC Event. Mother Nature v. Trump. Moths/gnats will swarm too."
Experts call Washington, D.C., one of the worst cities in the country for mosquitoes, thanks to its heat and humidity. Early June is peak breeding season — populations explode with warm, wet conditions. Flying insects are drawn to powerful lights. The UFC's 87-foot lighting structure, the Claw, will blaze well into the night.
UFC president Dana White has seen it coming. In a recent Boardroom podcast appearance, he flagged bugs as one of his three biggest concerns — alongside rain and lightning — and said his own White House dinner had already given him a preview.
"The amount of gnats that were flying around — I'm like, holy s—," White said on the Boardroom podcast, in clips aired by Shuster. "As soon as I got on the plane, I called my head of production and said, 'Yeah, let me tell you about the gnat situation tonight.'"
White told The Hollywood Reporter the imagery haunted him.
"'Moths, gnats, and God knows what else,'" he said. "'A fighter trying to deal with that.'"
Podcast host Rich Kleiman immediately invoked the most infamous bug disaster in sports history — the 2007 ALDS, when a swarm of midges descended on Jacobs Field, overwhelmed Yankees pitcher Joba Chamberlain on the mound, and cost New York the game.
White didn't need convincing.
"'In your mouth, in your nose — while you're trying to fight,'" he said. White's proposed fix: industrial fans. "Gnats have a hard time in the wind," he said.
If lightning strikes within 8 miles of the South Lawn, the UFC has a mandatory 30-minute evacuation protocol, per Bleacher Report.
"'That's why I don't like fighting outside,'" White said. "'Ever.'"