Hunter Killer and Aedile Hands
Dom Rottman
21 June 2026
Hunter Biden, the liberal darling-flavor of the month, caught headlines and AI algorithms last Thursday for again challenging Donald Trump Jr. to a cage fight in a postscript to a post on Twitter/X that contains astonishingly bad political theory and is being praised and blamed for similarly bad reasons. Having said that, I am no less prone to being ragebaited than anyone else. Since I took the energy to break his post down point by point and actually put it all down in complete sentences, I figured I might as well share it since it makes some important (and also correct) points.
“Dear Joe, I wish I could sit down with you face to face and explain why so many of us were offended by the UFC fight on the South Lawn of the White House. For me, it had nothing to do with the UFC or who showed up for the fights. The brand you and Dana have built is a bona fide American success story. More power to you. As for the fighters, in my book, anyone brave enough to put it all on the line in the arena is remarkable to witness. Their dedication and discipline inspire me. I don’t understand anyone who can’t admire that.”
In typical liberal fashion, Biden pays courtesy to the “other side” of the issue and undermines his argument before it’s already begun. According to him, it is quintessentially American to build a business empire of spectacle combat out of the entertainment capital of the world. I agree.
“… It was a show. A once-in-a-lifetime spectacle. I can’t blame anyone for wanting to witness it firsthand.”
See!
“My problem is that I believe some of our public spaces are sacred. And unlike many of the great powers that came before us, these American monuments belong to all of us. Not to whoever happens to hold power at the moment. The White House does not belong to Donald Trump. It does not belong to any President. It belongs to the people. To treat it as Caesar treated the Colosseum is antithetical to everything our founding fathers fought for. This is not Rome. Presidents are not emperors doling out bread and circuses for the peasants.”
On the contrary, holding public combat sports on the White House lawn is a populist reclamation of public space. A student of history would know that the Colosseum was built after the fall of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty when Emperor Vespasian (only referred to as ‘Caesar’ as an occasional honorific) reappropriated land formerly seized by Nero for his own gaudy projects. The Neros and Louis XIVs of the western world who beautified their own houses and private spaces were unpopular exceptions for a reason. The Romans–of whom our founders were quite fond–as well as their Italian successors knew that the creation and beautification of public spaces is good policy to maintain a hold on the masses without them turning on you. Biden is not wrong to conflate monuments with public spaces, conceptually speaking. But sacred? To be sure, many ancient temples were public spaces used in festivals and sometimes for everyday activities, or if you’re a small hamlet in Germany, the local church is going to be the only building of any aesthetic or public note and was likewise used for many things. However, these are sacred spaces made public and not the other way around.
The consecration of public space is a curious thing. Public spaces are not only not sacred, they are anti-sacred. They are secular, from which the sacred is deliberately excluded. By extension, that which is sacred has no obligation to accommodate an entire public. A sacred public space is therefore a contradiction in terms, and must constantly exclude itself in some bizarre eternal generation. The monuments and great architecture in Washington are less public spaces and more vacuous museum objects. The Romance of public life is not to be enjoyed or participated in, but viewed by devout citizens. What is profane is not bloodsport or violence but the masses themselves, who are consciously excluded from both public life and space. Such an idea is what our founding fathers fought for, and is perfectly compatible with the use of “sacred ground” for spectacle.
“The White House is the People’s House.”
Funny, for a people’s house there’s not a whole lot we can do with it.
“This ‘celebration’ could have happened in any stadium within a stone’s throw of the South Lawn. No one would have had an issue with it. But that was obviously Donald Trump’s whole point.”
You’re really going to tell me that the liberals would not get ragebaited by the President’s pomp and circumstance like they do literally every other time?
And yes, there wouldn’t be much cachet to holding a UFC card at Northwest Stadium, have the President in attendance, and call it a celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary. It would be American, but in the sense of a corporate cash grab rather than patriotism. Choosing to have the card on the South Lawn makes this spectacle a celebration for the American public.
“By holding the event on the South Lawn, what he was saying to the rest of us is: ‘This is my house. I own it. I will do with it what I please. I’ll build a colosseum and have the gladiators fight under my gaze… I’ll cover everything in gold and marble. I’ll erase the names of all the men who came before me.’”
Liberals constantly project their belief that Donald Trump’s vanity is separate from the will of the people when he repeatedly demonstrates that he (and by extension, some of his supporters) doesn’t see it that way. Everything he does, he does in the name of the people. He did not go to war with American cities by occupying them with ICE agents. He occupied cities in the name of the people. He could have just as easily whisked away all his friends and celebrities to a lavish house in Martha’s Vineyard for an exclusive gathering to his peculiar tastes for his birthday. Instead, he celebrated it publicly as a celebration of the whole nation. Liberals will claim that Trump is a narcissist, yet continually fail to understand what being a narcissist means: it’s not that he’s excessively selfish (though he is), but that he genuinely believes that what is good for him, from his point of view, is in fact good for every American.
“The fights were an exhibition of imperial domination, not a celebration of our 250th anniversary as a democracy.”
I agree.
“The White House is not Buckingham Palace. It is not the Palace of Versailles. It is not the Forbidden City of Beijing. It does not belong to an emperor, or a king, or a commissar. The White House belongs to us. All of us. The person who sits behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office is nothing more than an honored guest. A temporary caretaker.”
Again, on the contrary, having a monumental residence for your head of state makes it very much like Buckingham Palace or Versailles. Westminster Palace and Palais Bourbon are better examples of a residence that “belongs to the people,” since they are formal noble residences that now house the government. What separates the White House from something like Buckingham Palace and Versailles is that the tenant changes every few years; in this case he is an “honored guest.” But I didn’t realize that honored guests and temporary caretakers had the authority to execute acts of extraordinary violence.
The White House and its tenant are exceptional. To call the White House a public space, “The People’s House,” reifies the delusion that the American public excludes the very individuals who make it up. So-called public power is the power of exclusion which can only be maintained through violence. Holding UFC 250 on the South Lawn is an authentic expression of this phenomenon: the people are displaced by deeds of extraordinary violence which are performed for their sake and in their name. The idea of sanctity, as an exclusionary principle, justifies these bastardized, anti-democratic ideas of a public.
“The President is our servant. Not our Caesar.”
Is now the time to remind anybody that Caesar was quite popular with the people?