Il Nuovo Postiglione - Happy Birthday Mr. President: Trump to turn 80 with cage fight

A giant arena dubbed "The Claw" has been built on the famed South Lawn for Sunday's tournament featuring 14 Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) contestants.

Critics have panned the unprecedented $60 million "UFC Freedom 250" event as tone-deaf at a time when Trump's war in Iran has sent the cost of living soaring for ordinary Americans.

Trump says it is a great way to kick off the 250th anniversary of American independence -- not to mention his own birthday -- and insists UFC is bearing all of the cost.

But the billionaire Republican is also reveling in the macho side of an event that will see bare-knuckle fighters battle it out in a mesh-framed cage known as the "Octagon."

"They're the roughest people you'll ever meet," Trump told the New York Post on Thursday. "If you haven't seen it much, you're not going to believe it."

Trump has close ties with the violent sport's leaders and has attended several previous fights, endearing himself to its fanbase of young men who were also crucial to his own political rise.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio also hailed the event as he signed a partnership deal with UFC boss Dana White to promote mixed martial arts internationally.

"That's what Sunday is about, it's a gift to the American people," Rubio said on Thursday, adding that it would be watched by "probably a billion people all over the world."

It will certainly be unlike any other event in the White House's 200-year history.

Around 4,000 people will watch the match inside the arena itself, with Dana White saying more than half would go to members of the US military. Another 125,000 are expected to see it on a giant screen on the Ellipse, a green space just outside the White House.

- 'Gladiators' -

During a preview on Thursday, journalists were allowed to inspect the arena that weighs 600 tons (544 metric tons), stands 154 feet (47 meters) wide and 92 feet tall -- taller than the White House itself.

"The Claw" now stands on the same storied lawn where president Bill Clinton hosted the 1993 Oslo peace accords signing and Richard Nixon gave his final farewell.

But Trump, a former property tycoon and reality television star before his improbable political rise, has always been a different kind of president.

"Donald Trump has built a public persona throughout his life by being the Donald Trump show," Peter Loge, director of George Washington University's School of Media, told AFP.

"It's loud, it's glitzy, it's glossy, that's what this is."

Loge said the macho display on the White House lawn during a war and economic turmoil reflected a governing style that appealed to Trump's supporters.

"It's gladiators," he said. "In a time of chaos in the US, it is to say that the US is strength, it is force, and it is in control. There's fireworks -- and two guys beating each other up."

Not everyone is so keen.

In the run-up to the event, the Trump administration has had to battle a lawsuit seeking to prevent it going ahead, alleging that it was an improper use of public land to enrich the president's allies.

The White House rejected the claims in a court filing.

It also dismissed a suggestion -- made by a certain Donald J. Trump -- that the arena could even stay up in the same way that France kept the Eiffel Tower after the 1889 World Fair.

"The Claw will be disassembled immediately after the event concludes," Joshua Fisher, Director for White House Management and Administration, said in the papers.

M.Costa--INP