From The Political Scene: The Politics of the Big Game

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3:14Naomi Fry:Yorker's political scene podcast hosted by our colleague Tyler Foggett. We spoke with Tyler last week about Trump's appearance at the NBA playoffs, the UFC fight on the White House lawn, and this interesting crossover moment that's happening right now between sports and politics. And if you like what you hear, subscribe to the political scene so you'll never miss an episode.

3:41So I want to start this episode somewhere a little strange for us, which is with sports. Here's what happened in the course of about a week. The Knicks won their first NBA championship since 1973, and President Trump was in the building for Game 3, in a city that voted against him by something like 4-1. A few days later, the president turned the South Lawn of the White House into a UFC arena on his 80th birthday. And then, overlapping with all of this, the World Cup kicked off across the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, arriving in this country at a particularly fraught moment for U.S. foreign policy and at a very strict moment for immigration enforcement.

4:20Three sports with three completely different audiences, different cultural coatings, and different relationships to the man who was currently in the White House. And all three of them somehow became stages for something that wasn't really about the sport at all. Today I'm going to be speaking with staff writers Vincent Cunningham, Nomi Fry, and Louisa Thomas about these respective sporting events and what they might be saying about where the country is right now. We're going to start off with Vincent Cunningham, who's going to talk to us about the NBA Finals and, of course, the Knicks winning it all.

4:49This is The Political Scene. I'm Tyler Foggett, and I'm a senior editor at The New Yorker.

4:58Hey, Vincent. Hey. Thanks so much for being here. I'm just glad to be here. Yeah, no, I really appreciate you coming on to commemorate this historic moment. Oh, man. I'm just so happy for you. So happy. So as much as I just kind of want to break down, you know, the last few minutes of that game, this is a politics podcast, technically. So I suppose we should start by addressing the elephant in the room. The only game that the Knicks lost in their series against the Spurs was the game that President Trump attended. And I think it would be kind of insulting to pretend like Trump's presence actually dictated the outcome of the game.

5:32Like it would be insulting to both the Knicks and the Spurs. But I'm wondering if you can explain why Trump's attendance was so controversial, given that there's a long history of presidents, including Trump himself, going to big sporting events like the Super Bowl, for instance. Well, a couple of reasons. One is Trump's, I think, pretty consistent history of, you could say sometimes benignly neglecting, but often expressing real animus toward the NBA specifically. um many of the nba stars have been very vocal about not wanting to visit the white house after they win um the nba championship i think it was stephen curry who was like ain't going trump has had his public scuffles um at least sort of verbally with lebron james it's you know unmistakably true that the nba not only demographically but sort of culturally puts kind of blackness forward in a way that the other sports major american sports leagues do not obviously that is not always trump's vibe so um it it seemed kind of opportunistic hypocritical for him to be like basketball fan that i have always been i will be there you know um plus is like and the other reason is of course his seems to be genuine friendship with james dolan the owner of the Knicks and the owner-operator of Madison Square Garden who, yes, he owns the Knicks but he's very controversial among Knicks fans so that being his way in is also not the most popular thing and it also made it incredibly hard to get into the Garden that day this great festival of good feeling which was this whole playoffs and the Knicks' incredible exploits therein was kind of the only kind of weirdly dampened day was that day for those reasons.

7:25So it was strange. I also feel like, I mean, it's a time where there are a lot of new Knicks fans. I feel like a lot of, you know, New York City transplants who haven't necessarily been rooting for the Knicks their entire lives have been sharing in the joy of this moment. And I don't know about you, but for me, like, whenever someone roots for my team, it's like, you are my best friend. I don't care who you came from. I don't care what your political beliefs are. Like, we are one. And so if Trump had gone to the game and had been, like, super into the Knicks and like cheering, I almost feel like I think a lot of people would have maybe forgiven his presence a little bit.

7:56But he also like fell asleep. I mean, at least there are some photos online of his eyes closed. I don't know for how long exactly. He seems that way more and more. I mean, he does it at the White House. Why not do it also at a basketball game? Yeah, that says less about the Knicks and more about him. But you kind of got the sense that he was there for reasons beyond, you know, just caring about basketball. It strikes me that Madison Square Garden, where the Knicks play arguably has one of the strangest political histories of any building in the country. I mean, it hosted that pro-Nazi rally in 1939.

8:28It's where Ali fought. It's where Trump held his closing rally in 2024. And I guess I'm just wondering, like, at first I was like, I wonder if Trump is trying to get in on, like, this exciting moment for New York City and kind of just, like, take credit for that. And then I was like, maybe this has way more to do with, like, Trump's relationship to that building and also his relationship to New York and his desire to be embraced by the city that, like, made him, but at the same time kind of despises him. I mean, New York is so liberal. Yeah. I mean, of course, he's a bloodhound for attention and saw the amount of attention that the Knicks were getting.

9:04And I think that is just a sort of raw instinct of his to go where the heat is. Yeah. He and Taylor Swift, they both have that. That's right. They both knew to show up. And of course, that area, you know, roughly 32nd to 34th Street and 8th Avenue, the old Penn Station looms large down there. So local New York politics is still very much operative there. The plans to build a new Penn Station, at least one of those plans might move Madison Square Garden elsewhere. James Dolan does not want this. So there might have actually been real local politicking happening there between those two guys up in that box as well.

9:39And so there's a lot there. And you can, and I do, blame Trump, tar him with a lot of different feathers. But he is really, truly a New Yorker. And I do feel that he had a bit of FOMO there. The last time that the Knicks won a championship was 1973, which is a drought that I think kind of maps onto the trajectory of the city itself. Like a place that has spent 50 years being told that it's ungovernable, that it's too expensive, that it's too chaotic. and now the Knicks have won and it seems like everyone wants to be in New York. And I wonder if you think that the good vibes here right now are just temporary or if there's a way in which a championship like this actually does have some kind of long-term effect on the city, whether it be political or just like in terms of building community.

10:24Yeah. Well, famously in the 1970s, New York's municipal government had to be, you know, the language gets more and more dramatic as we go on in time. but basically saved by a coalition mostly from the banking world. New York's former lieutenant governor, Dick Ravitch, was a big part of this. And yeah, so that was the moment in New York's history where sort of the idea that the city was ungovernable, sure, but that the sort of horizons of possibility for it, especially on the level of budgets, was kind of like constrained, right? And then you have now Zoran Mamdani who puts forward a new vision, a vision of abundance and not sort of just like strict taming that we need an iron fist to govern the city, etc.

11:16And so that motion, I think, to your point, is very operative here, that New York's politics are partially a result of the migration that you mentioned. lots of people have talked about the sort of gentrification of for instance black politics in new york the democratic socialists of america you could pin their uh sort of increased prominence to an influx of migrants from elsewhere in the country but also i think um in the history of new york i kind of think about the full streets that we saw the full um our new cover of the new yorker has just like a street scene of people on the street people on fire escapes etc the fullness of the city, I think, creates a direct counterpoint to the empty streets that we saw during COVID as well.

12:03That, you know, this desolation, this kind of desperate emptying out has finally—it seems that this great, like, sort of parade atmosphere, this atmosphere of a festival seems like maybe a completion of the cycle that started back in 2020. So I think there's a lot of symbolism here that, you know, is too touching to really bear, honestly. I can't believe it. Thank you so much, Vincent. Thank you. This was so much fun, and congrats again. God damn, I'll take it every time. Thank you. You really earned it. You know, and I played the game, so, yeah. We're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, I'll talk with staff writer Nomi Fry about the UFC Freedom 250 event that took place on the White House lawn over the weekend.

12:47This is the political scene from The New Yorker.

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15:29Naomi Fry:Hey, Naomi. Hi, Tyler. Thanks so much for being here. Oh, my God. It's a pleasure, an honor, and a privilege, as always. So I was just talking to Vincent, your Critics at Large co-host, about the Knicks. As you can imagine, he was extremely excited. Yes. And we were talking a little bit about how Trump seems to have fallen asleep during the Knicks game and probably doesn't even care about basketball. But there's a sport that he does genuinely seem to like, which is UFC. And on Sunday night, the UFC Freedom 250 event was hosted on the White House lawn in honor of America's 250th birthday, but also Trump's 80th birthday.

16:02We both watched this event live, and you actually wrote a brilliant piece about it. So I'm wondering if you can just tell the listeners who maybe don't have Paramount Plus subscriptions or who were doing literally anything else on Sunday night. What was this event like? Like, what were your impressions of it?

16:20Naomi Fry:Okay, so I should come clean at the top of this and say that I really don't know a whole lot about mixed martial arts or the UFC. In preparation for this historic event, the first sporting event held on White House grounds, I believe. So this is unprecedented. I did read around a little bit. I read the interview that David Remnick did with Dana White, the CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship organization. And I kind of tried to get my bearings around what's going to happen here. So what ended up happening was seven fights, 14 contenders, about half of them American. The other kind of a mixed bag of like there was Brazilians.

17:10Naomi Fry:There was like a Canadian. There was a Dagestani fighter. There was a Frenchman. And basically, as you said, yes, on the south lawn of the White House, an enormous 85 foot high structure nicknamed the Claw. was built under which the kind of like regulation ring of the UFC was placed, which is called the octagon. It's a, you know, I think I can picture that. Yes. Eight sided ring space that is fenced off. Right. And that is where the two fighters face each other. And UFC, you know, I mean, some of the listeners might know if not, it's mixed martial arts. So basically, there's a lot of things that are allowed that aren't allowed either in wrestling or in boxing.

18:05Naomi Fry:There's grappling, there's kicking, there's punching, elbows to the groin. You know, it's a very short, sharp, nasty, brutish sport. And yeah, so basically, this all went down on the South Lawn and it was surreal. I have to say it was surreal. Like I know at this point in the Trump administration, the second Trump administration, I shouldn't be surprised at kind of like the sheer weirdness that we are being exposed to. You know, such like the most august institutions of this great country are being, I don't even know if replaced, but kind of merged with these vernacular, highly marketed, vulgar elements of culture of which the UFC is an example.

19:02Naomi Fry:You know, it's a rough sport. The marketing of it, the sponsors of it are among the most kind of, I would say, populist brands that we have. You know, Crypto.com, Monster Energy Drink, you know, Polymarket Betting Platform, Bud Light, you know, just all of these. And it was just so weird to see this octagon absolutely plastered with ads for all of these brands, just like literally in the shadow of the White House. This event had something like a 16 percent approval rating, like it has a lower approval rating than the Iran war. How did the announcers go about selling this to the American people?

19:50I get like Trump likes UFC and it was his birthday. But like, I guess, how did they square this idea of like men beating each other up, many of whom are I mean, I feel like you mentioned this in your piece, but like UFC is not necessarily like a super like American sport. Like you can make a debate about whether it's football or basketball or baseball is the most American sport, but like no one is pretending like it's UFC.

20:14Naomi Fry:Yeah. Where a lot of the dominant players are, you know, from Brazil and other places, as you mentioned. So, like, did they sell it by branding it as fights between Americans and fighters from other nations? I mean, kind of. I think there was a lot of emphasis put from the commentators. You know, Joe Rogan was a commentator, from the announcers, from the way Trump talked about it leading up to it. I think there is a sense that this is a sport and a kind of cultural event in which the American spirit of grappling to domination is what needs to be proven. Right. And there was the way it was talked about during the event, there was so much kind of like this is patriotism kind of like woven into the proceedings.

21:12Naomi Fry:And all the American fighters like, you know, wrap themselves up in like the American flag. There were chants of USA, USA ringing, you know, in the crowd periodically and enthusiastically. the fact that I don't think there was even to your question about like how this was sold I don't think there was any apologetics attached to it at all it wasn't like oh well we know this is not what other people think of when they think of the White House when they think of the Capitol when they think of like American culture but we're going to try something a little bit different no It was just like, this is like a fate accompli, you know?

21:56Naomi Fry:This is like, this is how it's going to be from now on. We have like men punching each other's lights out under the eye of God and country. You know, I watched the press conference that was held on Friday in the Lincoln Memorial. And it was basically just like these 14 fighters shit-talking each other under the gaze of honest Abe. It is truly surreal. And it'd be one thing if the event had just painted a picture of kind of patriotism and nationalism as something that's incredibly masculine and violent and aggressive. Like that alone would be kind of offensive. But just the fact that one of the fighters won his match and then during his victory speech, he made an incredibly awful comment about Michelle Obama.

22:47Can you tell us exactly what he said and how the crowd responded to it?

22:52Naomi Fry:So one of the fighters, an American named Josh Hokett, who calls himself the Incredible Hoke, and he is one of those, culturally speaking, I guess, wrestling-adjacent fighters in the sense that he is a comic. He's a bit of a comedian. He has all of these personas that he puts on, much like Hulk Hogan or Andre the Giant in the heyday of wrestling in the 80s. he came out to Hulk Hogan's theme song, in fact, when he walked from the White House and towards the octagon. So he's like a character, but in fact, it like kind of gives way to the absolute utter vulgarity. During the weigh-in, during the official weigh-in, when he went on the scale, he kind of like dribbled this vomit-like substance from his mouth and kind of like, you know, wove around as if drunk, I guess, and was like, what?

23:45Naomi Fry:I might have gotten a little drunk last night. You know, so it's pretty vile. And then he won his match against Lewis, known as the Black Beast. And so, you know, the Incredible Hulk triumphed. And then he talked to Joe Rogan after because Joe Rogan did the kind of like exit interviews or whatever they're called. and he said first of all I want to you know shout out Trump for having the balls to put the shit in the White House on the South Lawn etc etc and like praise Jesus Christ the savior etc and then he said Michelle Obama is a man am I right America and there were some cheers for sure it wasn't like deafening but it was there were cheers there were certainly no booze and there were certainly no it wasn't like Joe Rogan then like took back the mic and condemned the comment.

24:36No. Like I know that after the fact, Dana White, you know, issued a statement that basically said, I'll read it. I understand that the Obamas are public figures, but I'm completely against saying nasty and false things about people's families. Everyone knows my position on free speech, but I hate that kind of nonsense. And yet that just like I was watching live that just happened. And then they just moved on.

24:56Naomi Fry:They just moved on. Yeah, there was no comment about it. And it was it was pretty. Even within that sort of rough and tumble context that we're talking about, it was it was gross. It was vile. It was shocking. And it was like, oh, OK, so this is kind of what this can give rise to, you know, which is obviously not great. Not great. One thing that I was curious about when I was talking with Vincent was just the extent to which Trump actually likes basketball. And we started this conversation by saying that Trump actually likes UFC. But when I was watching the event last night, he also seemed not even really that into what he was watching.

25:39And so I guess I'm wondering, like, if you could talk a little bit about what his reaction to the fights was and if you think he genuinely likes UFC, like we said, or if it's more about him having some kind of political alignment with high profile UFC figures.