this is honestly an excellent celebratory and motivational speech from Mamdani at the Knicks parade. i'm ready to run through a wall, and i'm not even a Knicks fan
Dear Joe,
I wish I could sit down with you face to face and explain why so many of us were offended by the UFC fight on the South Lawn of the White House.
For me, it had nothing to do with the UFC or who showed up for the fights. The brand you and Dana have built is a bona fide American success story. More power to you. As for the fighters, in my book, anyone brave enough to put it all on the line in the arena is remarkable to witness. Their dedication and discipline inspire me. I don’t understand anyone who can’t admire that.
And as for the people who attended, I, for one, love Shane Gillis. I think he’s hilarious and brilliant. It was a show. A once-in-a-lifetime spectacle. I can’t blame anyone for wanting to witness it firsthand.
My problem is that I believe some of our public spaces are sacred. And unlike many of the great powers that came before us, these American monuments belong to all of us. Not to whoever happens to hold power at the moment.
The White House does not belong to Donald Trump. It does not belong to any President. It belongs to the people. To treat it as Caesar treated the Colosseum is antithetical to everything our founding fathers fought for.
This is not Rome. Presidents are not emperors doling out bread and circuses for the peasants. The White House is the People’s House. This “celebration” could have happened in any stadium within a stone’s throw of the South Lawn. No one would have had an issue with it.
But that was obviously Donald Trump’s whole point. By holding the event on the South Lawn, what he was saying to the rest of us is:
“This is my house. I own it. I will do with it what I please. I’ll build a colosseum and have the gladiators fight under my gaze. I’ll tear down the East Wing. I’ll pave over the Rose Garden. I’ll cover everything in gold and marble. I’ll erase the names of all the men who came before me.”
The fights were an exhibition of imperial domination, not a celebration of our 250th anniversary as a democracy.
The White House is not Buckingham Palace. It is not the Palace of Versailles. It is not the Forbidden City of Beijing. It does not belong to an emperor, or a king, or a commissar.
The White House belongs to us. All of us. The person who sits behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office is nothing more than an honored guest. A temporary caretaker.
The President is our servant. Not our Caesar.
Respectfully, Hunter
P.S. Cage match between me and Don Jr.? Your call on the venue. Anywhere but the South Lawn.
Norway fans are doing a “Viking Row” up the escalator at Boston’s South Station before heading to the World Cup
Adding this to the list of things I’ve never seen before and probably never will again
A junior doctor in the casualty asked me: "Sir, two patients just arrived. One has a BP of 200/120, the other is at 80/50. Who do we prioritize first?"
My answer: Go look at their faces.
This is all so insane. We found this when we got back to our room. And then someone even sent cupcakes to our room. I genuinely don’t understand how it got to this point. We’re just normal World Cup tourists.😭😭
To everyone so eager to cancel someone for a tattoo they got at age 22, a drunk text, a selfie they took in the middle of a mental health crisis:
Show us your laptop.
Show us your iCloud.
Open your entire digital life to your worst enemy. No context. No filter. No explanation.
You won’t.
You won’t because you know what I know. Any one of us, frozen at our worst moment, photographed in our lowest hour, looks like a monster. Looks like a stranger. Looks like someone who deserves to be cast out.
That is not who we are.
My mom and baby sister were killed in a car accident when I was just a kid. Cancer took my brother Beau, my best friend and my rock. I battled alcoholism. I battled addiction. I chose the coward’s way out more times than I can count.
For years I believed the defining chapters of my life were written by tragedy, loss, and shame.
I no longer believe that.
Pain can shape us. Loss can humble us. Failures can leave scars that never fully fade. But none of them have the authority to define us.
And it sure as hell ain’t the critic that counts.
That authority belongs to us alone-the person in the arena.
Every setback presents a choice. Play the victim, or cut the bullshit and take ownership for who we become next.
Life does not determine our character. It reveals it.
Again and again we are asked the same question. When shit happens, what next?
We are not defined by what happened to us. We are not defined by the worst photo, the worst text, the worst tattoo, the worst night. We are defined by the person we choose to become. And by the courage to choose that person, every single day.
So before you reach for the gavel - show us your laptop.
You won’t.
The whole world saw mine. And I am still here. Still becoming. Still choosing. Still standing.
That is the only definition that matters.
The Algerian soccer team is staying at the Doubletree in Lawrence, Kansas. People are freaking out because they thought they should be in a nicer place. Algeria picked that hotel because it has a pool and you can smoke there 😆 I like them!
USA. They sell food here in the sizes of war. A single jar of mayonnaise as large as my helmet. I bought two. One must always keep a reserve.
I entered a hall so vast it had weather. Shelves to the heavens. And upon them, no small things. No humble portions. Everything sized as if for a siege.
A bag of rice I could not lift alone. A tower of paper as tall as a child. Forty-eight of one thing, ninety of another, a vat of oil that could float a boat. And the people pushed carts the size of carriages, loading them as if the snows were coming and would not leave for years.
I understood at once, and I was moved to my core.
For it is written that a house is judged not in its feasting but in its famine — by whether, when the long winter comes, it can feed its own without bowing to any lord. This nation does not shop. This nation provisions. Every family a fortress, stocked to outlast a siege that is not coming, has never come, and against which they remain magnificently, gloriously prepared.
So I provisioned. I filled a carriage-cart to the brim. Rice for a regiment. The helmet of mayonnaise, and its reserve. Enough paper to write the history of the world. Twice.
And here my heart rose, and I declared the thing a calmer man would not:
"Let the hardest winter in a thousand years descend. Let the roads vanish and the rivers freeze. I will not so much as rise from my chair — for I hold, in my garage, mayonnaise enough to outlast the apocalypse, and a man with that much mayonnaise fears no season, no army, and no god."
The woman checking receipts at the door studied my cart a long moment.
Then she smiled. "Big family?"
"Not yet," I told her, honestly.
I took my provisions home. And because no winter came — none ever does — I did the only honorable thing a man can do with a fortress full of food.
I fed the whole street.
We ate for a week. The mayonnaise held.
So tell me, America.
You call it buying in bulk. A Costco run. A little too much, as usual.
I call it every household quietly ready to survive the end of the world —
and then, when the world stubbornly refuses to end,
throwing a feast instead.
A 25-year-old from the suburbs visits Tokyo
and has a quiet breakdown.
Not because anything went wrong.
Because for the first time in his life
he didn't need a car to exist.
He walked to dinner.
Took a train to a museum.
Grabbed groceries on the way home.
Never once sat in traffic, alone,
paying for parking.
He grew up being told this was impossible.
Japan just calls it a city.
A whole generation is realizing
the thing they were sold as 'freedom'
was actually a parking lot.