As the UFC fighters left their locker rooms Sunday night and headed out to the Octagon, they strutted through the Oval Office—a space once so revered that Ronald Reagan wouldn’t enter it unless he was wearing a suit jacket. A select group of spectators had been invited to the White House grounds, and the public was allowed to join a watch party on the National Mall. But anyone outside the DC region could only tune in to “the most historic sporting event of all time” via Paramount , a paid streaming service owned by David Ellison, the son of one of Trump’s biggest donors.

Throughout his second term in office, Trump has conducted private business ventures, mixed his financial interests with government policy, and even invited business partners into the Oval Office. But Sunday’s night’s fight at the White House took things to a new level, the most open and blatant example—so far—of Trump and his allies mingling personal financial interests with the institution of the presidency.

The fight itself was a mega-event for the UFC, which was allowed to put a giant steel claw to illuminate the fighting cage on the White House lawn. UFC is owned by the publicly traded TKO Group, shares of which the president owns.

It was a commercial sell-out of the White House—a private, for-profit event. The........

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