Matt Bevan

This podcast was produced on the lands of the Awabakal and Gadigal people.

Back in the 1980s, US President Ronald Reagan started giving kids big jars of jelly beans when they visited the White House.

Reagan had been a smoker back in the 60s, but he'd managed to kick the habit by switching an addiction to cigarettes with an addiction to jelly belly jelly beans.

And so in the 1980s, when he became US president, his obsession with those jelly beans boosted that company's sales massively.

But closely associating your brand with a politician can be a bit of a mixed blessing.

Decades later, Mike Lindell, better known as the MyPillow guy, hitched his wagon to US President Donald Trump and... I ran out of money.

Nothing left.

Lindell spent all of his money trying to prove the 2020 election was stolen and ended up with none of it.

This year, on Donald Trump's 80th birthday, there was a big party on his back lawn.

Now, on the surface, it seems a little odd that the president would give a private company exclusive rights to broadcast the proceedings of his 80th birthday on publicly owned land.

It's also odd that the sport chosen is mixed martial arts.

Less than 10% of Americans say they follow combat sport.

It's less popular than basketball and tennis, and the White House lawn already has a basketball and tennis court.

This wasn't really about the popularity of the sport.

It was about the importance of this particular company, the UFC, to Donald Trump.

Trump and the UFC have been entangled for decades.

The UFC's president says its current success and popularity is partially down to something Donald Trump did to help them 25 years ago.

This event at the White House publicly and permanently tied the UFC to Donald Trump, like Jelly Belly and Ronald Reagan.

The question is, will the UFC's boss Dana White end up cashing in like the boss of Jelly Belly, or will he be more like the MyPillow guy?

I'm Matt Bevan, and this is If You're Listening.