The timing could have been better. On Saturday night, Americans saw JD Vance appear before reporters and announce that diplomatic talks with Iran had failed. At roughly the same time as the vice president alerted the world to the discouraging news, Donald Trump strolled into a venue in Miami to watch a mixed martial arts fight.
The New York Times noted soon after, “It was unclear whether the president knew that negotiations had failed by the time he entered the arena for the U.F.C. event. … He wasn’t tapping away on his phone — he left that to Mr. Rubio, who at one point leaned over to show the president his screen — and he didn’t betray disappointment or anger.”
Given the stakes and seriousness of the diplomatic efforts, one would ordinarily expect an American president to be at least somewhat engaged in the process. Trump, however, appeared more interested in his violent entertainment.
This remained the case on Monday afternoon. The Hill reported:
President Trump detailed new plans for a UFC fight the league is planning on the White House grounds in June.
‘I’ve been involved in a lot of big events, I have never had an event that has had more interest than the UFC fight we have right at the front door,’ Trump told reporters gathered outside the Oval Office on Monday.
Pointing to the South Lawn, the Republican told reporters, “Right there, they’re going to start building a 4,500-seat arena, and then in the back, at the Ellipse, we’re going to have 100,000, maybe 50,000 to 100,000 people, I guess. They’re building tremendous stages, and we’re going to have massive screens of the fight. It’s a very popular sport.”
Trump was referring to an upcoming UFC event at the White House, scheduled for his birthday, in June, which is something he brings up quite regularly.
And while there’s certainly room for discussion about the propriety of constructing temporary structures for such an event at the White House, a related point appears unavoidable: The president remains fixated on his long list of distractions and trivialities.
Amid widespread concerns about the struggling economy, a deadly and destabilizing war that hasn’t gone according to the White House’s plans, and a burgeoning global energy crisis, recent polling has found that two-thirds of Americans are convinced that their unpopular president simply has the wrong priorities.
Trump keeps proving them right.
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By all appearances, the Republican is focused on UFC bouts. And cheap attacks against Bruce Springsteen. And promoting himself as some kind of American Jesus. And don’t even get me started on his obsession with his ballroom vanity project.
What’s more, this keeps happening. At a White House event last month at the Kennedy Center, the president spoke at great length, not about the war he initiated in Iran, but about paint colors and his marble preferences.
It came on the heels of related preoccupations, covering everything from the Super Bowl halftime show to his dissatisfaction with the Grammy Awards to his whining about which comedians are making fun of him.
As part of the president’s appeal in the E. Jean Carroll case, his lawyers argued in a court filing that Trump is simply too busy to deal with the civil litigation, which was odd for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that Trump doesn’t seem focused on his weighty responsibilities at all.
Given that recent polling found 68% of Americans believe the president has the wrong priorities, it’s amazing to watch him try to push that number higher.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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