The White House is banking on President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday bash — featuring an Ultimate Fighting Championship battle royale on the White House lawn — to help win back a voter bloc that helped propel him to a second term in office.
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Trump and UFC President Dana White are putting the finishing touches on an unprecedented fight card scheduled for the White House South Lawn June 14.
But polls suggest the demographic the spectacle is aimed at impressing has already checked out, reported CNN.
The event, framed as part of America’s 250th birthday celebrations, will feature eight American fighters and two major title bouts before an estimated 85,000 spectators on the Ellipse. White has been insistent that the spectacle is apolitical. “I don’t care if you’re the furthest crazy left, or the furthest crazy right,” he said. “If you are an American, you will enjoy this show.”
The numbers, however, tell a more complicated story. According to the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics, roughly one in four men under 29 now approve of Trump’s job performance — well below the national average — and just 15 percent believe the country is headed in the right direction. Only 10 percent of young men identify as MAGA, and fewer than three in 10 want Republicans to control Congress.
Trump carried men under 30 in 2024, having lost the demographic by double digits four years earlier. That turnaround was driven in part by a media strategy shaped by White himself, who introduced the then-candidate to a network of podcasters, streamers and online influencers capable of reaching disengaged young men at scale.
“I felt like that if the president stayed on Fox he wasn’t going to win,” White said. “What I do know is he can sit on a three-hour podcast and be relatable to a lot of people.”
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Now some of those same figures are turning. Joe Rogan, who endorsed Trump days before the election, recently said supporters feel “betrayed” over the war with Iran. Comedians Theo Von and Andrew Schulz, who each hosted Trump for interviews on their podcasts during the campaign, have also grown critical of the administration.
John Della Volpe, who has directed the Harvard Youth Poll for over two decades, said young men are responding less to ideology and more to their daily circumstances — rising costs, an unaffordable housing market and anxiety over artificial intelligence reshaping their job prospects.
“The cultural part works,” Della Volpe said, “but it’s trumped by the experience.”
While acknowledging the struggle to retain backing from younger men, a senior White House adviser dismissed the significance of these numbers in determining the election’s story.
“There’s other ways to reach those audiences, and we will,” the adviser said, “and we will cobble a coalition together by hook or by crook.”
