Not that these are necessarily the smartest people to listen to, but it's still amusing that Sean Strickland—a fighter who has previously been associated with white nationalist circles—is now sarcastically claiming that he's been banned because he isn't "pro-Israel" enough. He posted a video about it, which I've linked below.
Recent reports indicate that Strickland says he was barred from attending the UFC White House event because of comments he made criticizing Israel and U.S. foreign policy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWGpQWFbVcg
Other fighters and former champions have also questioned why Strickland should be excluded from a White House event simply for criticizing a foreign country.
Joe Rogan has likewise criticized the White House event, arguing that holding an outdoor fight in Washington, D.C., during the summer heat is a bad idea. He has also raised concerns about weather, security, and the overall logistics of staging a championship-level event outdoors.
Since this isn't really my circle, it was enlightening to see how many MAGA voters—particularly those with more hardline nationalist or racist views—appear to be turned off by the perception that Trump is being overly influenced by Netanyahu.
I suspect this may be another one of those difficult-to-measure factors that polling misses. Similar to how pollsters struggled to capture the surge of first-time rural white voters who turned out for Trump against both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, there may be pockets of voters whose attitudes and motivations aren't being fully reflected in the data.
Whether the effect is large enough to matter electorally is another question, but it seems like the kind of under-the-radar dynamic that traditional polling often has trouble measuring.