Many members of the media are upset about the UFC Freedom 250 event that happened on Sunday, ostensibly in honor of Flag Day, on the White House lawn and involving a military flyover, UFC matches, bike stunts, and more. Charlie, on today’s edition of The Editors, says that “the notion that this is a historical aberration and desecration of the White House isn’t quite right.”
“So this is for me a double-edged sword in that I’m not crying about it because it violated the sanctity of the presidency,” says Charlie. “But equally if I had my way, this would be a long way from what the president did, because the president would not be a national celebrity. The president would be a boring man who executed laws passed by Congress. But of all the things to get het up about in our era of imperial presidencies, this is very low down my list.”
Charlie thinks “that those who have spent the last 36 hours clutching their pearls over this . . . need to understand that they are devoting their energies to the minutiae and not the bigger picture.”
Charlie points out that the show “was not indicative of anything really, other than the eccentricity of the current occupant of the White House.”
The spectacle “didn’t fail. It just shouldn’t be what we’re doing with our government.”
The Editors podcast is recorded on Tuesdays and Fridays every week and is available wherever you listen to podcasts.