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From Covid and Coffee

Good morning, C&C, it’s Monday! Our regularly scheduled programming —part II of our investigation into the deep state’s Reckoning™— has been shifted to tomorrow. I could not overlook the virtually impossible confluence of blessings that attended the President’s 80th birthday weekend, coming as it does just weeks before the Nation’s blockbuster 250th anniversary. Strap in, today’s seemingly unrelated stories are going to knock your leg warmers off.
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Regular readers know that I have something of a dot-connection impulse, or possibly an obsession. (We don’t know yet.) This one I can’t prove. I mean that proving it is impossible. Proving the existence of a lucky president falls into the hazy Twilight Zone beyond the boundaries of conventional science. But the dots are right there. We’ll prime the dot-connection lab table with this uncharacteristically chipper headline from PBS: “Trump celebrates 80th birthday with Iran deal ahead of UFC fights on White House South Lawn.”

CLIP: One of many moving, patriotic video shorts prepared for the UFC event (1:26).

The White House UFC show was part scheduled for President Trump’s 80th birthday and part of the national celebration of our 250th anniversary. It was staged as a made-for-TV spectacle: a 4,300-plus-seat arena built under a glowing steel arch on the South Lawn, with another massed crowd of 85,000+ in a nearby fan zone, and a global streaming push likely driving a live audience of millions worldwide, with even more on delay.

On Sunday night, the manicured South Lawn was transformed into a temporary fight stadium, dominated by “The Claw,” a 92‑foot‑tall metal superstructure loaded with patriotic lights, sound rigs, and giant video screens looming over the UFC Octagon. Spectators piled into tightly packed temporary grandstands wrapped around the cage, while tens of thousands more watched from big screens on the nearby Ellipse, turning the whole White House grounds into something like a Las Vegas fight-night superspectacular.

President Trump made a dramatic, slow-mo televised walk from the mansion to the arena beside UFC CEO Dana White, while fighter jets roared overhead in a flyover, framing the evening explicitly as both presidential pageant and combat-sports event. Inside the cage, pairs of fighters cycled through seven-plus bouts, trading elbows, kicks, and takedowns in quick succession under the bright white lights, the crowd surging to its feet for knockdowns and finishes while cameras panned repeatedly to the presidential seating area a few feet from the chain link.

At regular intervals, the crowd broke into full‑throated “Happy Birthday” songs for the president, and medal‑of‑honor recipients and first responders escorted fighters to the Octagon, blending patriotic ceremony with blood sport in a way that felt intentionally on‑the‑nose even by modern political‑entertainment standards. The Claw itself —already compared by Trump to a kind of Washington Eiffel Tower— hung in most wide shots, a glowing industrial crown over the cage that visually fused the White House façade, the crowd, and the Octagon into a single, continuous arena.

Let’s start with the event itself.

🔥 Thing was, it should have been rained out. Weather forecasts threatened the show all weekend, not just by predicting rain, but fierce thunderstorms, the news of which electrified liberals on BlueSky. They spent all day Saturday and Sunday posting BlueBird droppings, gushing in eager anticipation about Trump’s birthday being ruined by bad weather. Indeed, the event’s start was delayed by an hour due to rain, high winds, and lightning. But late yesterday, Front Office Sports reported, “UFC Freedom 250 Goes Off Despite Political and Weather Drama” Some called it a weather miracle.

Next: the result. It was never supposed to happen, either. The headlined fight was a matchup between long-shot American fighter Justin Gaethje and the reigning, undisputed world champion, Spain’s Ilia Topuria. Yahoo Sports reported the shocking upset: “Justin Gaethje shocks Ilia Topuria, pulls off ultimate U.S. upset on White House lawn”

Justin Gaethje, 37, from Tucson, “was widely believed to be past his peak.” Despite being cast as a more than 6-to-1 underdog, and “despite being roundly dismissed as a lamb led to slaughter on the biggest stage in UFC history,” Gaethje did the unthinkable, Yahoo Sports narrated, “brutally stopping” Topuria to capture the lightweight title. Gaethje’s feat, the article explained, “is among the biggest upsets in UFC history” and “one of the greatest results for an American fighter in MMA history.”

“Hey, I’m from America. Two hundred and fifty years ago, we were way bigger than 6-to-1 dogs, and look at us thriving now,” an elated Gaethje shouted in victory. Other winners on the night’s ticket thanked God, made Gospel statements, said they were blessed to compete on the White House lawn and were grateful for the opportunity. It gave the broadcast a noticeably faith-positive vibe layered onto the patriotic staging.

So far, for President Trump’s birthday weekend, we have a weather near-miracle saving fight night literally at the last moment (or 60 moments past), despite witches hexing the event or whatever they do these days, and a dramatic come-from-way-behind story about the American winning at the nation’s 250th anniversary-branded fight event.

It was the weekend’s theme. America is roaring back.

🔥 The rest of the world might not emphasize mixed martial arts to the same extent, but the rest of the world does love soccer. To put it kindly, America is not a soccer heavyweight. The last time our team experienced a conclusive victory was decades ago in 2002, and so it gets less coverage than the 5th-grade team at Susan B. Anthony Middle School in Poughkeepsie. But on Saturday, the U.S. Men’s Team pulled off a “dominating 4-1 win” over Paraguay in their first game of the 2026 World Cup, and their first three‑goal victory margin at a World Cup since 1930.

CNN reported the patriotic story with laudable enthusiasm, below the headline, “A perfectly American start to the USA’s 2026 World Cup.” Fans clogged the streets outside of SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, “turned out in every which way one could fashion the stars and stripes— it felt like a country’s worth of Fourth of July parades combined into one.” Independence Day remains weeks away, but the crowd was clearly feeling it:

Hopes for the American team ran high. As players arrived at the stadium, the speakers blared David Bowie and Queen singing, “Under Pressure.” After the U.S. team scored its first goal early in the game —a Paraguayan defender tipped the ball into his own net— the crowd went wild. “To explain the stadium eruption that followed,” CNN reported, “is to imagine a Super Bowl where nearly everyone was rooting for one team.”

It’s only FIFA’s first weekend, and the games continue through July 19th across Canada, Mexico, and the United States. I’m not predicting our team’s continued success. I’m noting a remarkable underdog launch from the starting line and the curious coincidence of timing— another extraordinary achievement arriving on President Trump’s high-profile birthday weekend.

🔥 Ready for another long-shot sporting upset in the same weekend? Fox News reported, “A longtime Knicks fan, Trump became the first sitting president to attend an NBA Finals game when he sat alongside team owner James Dolan at Game 3 of the series, as New York finished off the San Antonio Spurs in five games to clinch the championship.” NBC-4 New York’s simply reported, “Knicks beat Spurs in Game 5, win first NBA championship since 1973.”

“I have no words,” Jalen Brunson, the NBA Finals MVP, said during an on-court celebration after the game. “It’s everything I ever dreamed of.”

It’s a big deal for the Big Apple; it’s the city’s first NBA championship victory since the Cold War era. ABC-7 New York reported, “New York Knicks ticker-tape parade preparations underway ahead of Thursday celebration.”

We could make too much of this. It’s ‘just sports.’ It was just New York (Trump’s hometown) versus San Antonio. Upsets happen all the time— that’s what keeps sports interesting. But there were three in one weekend.

So let’s move beyond sports. Remember what the media has minted into the President’s biggest domestic political problem?

🔥 Yesterday, the BBC observed that “the announcement of an Iran deal has provided Donald Trump with a very welcome birthday present.” The New York Times reported, “Oil Tumbles and Stocks Surge After Trump Announces Deal With Iran.” Oil prices tumbling and stocks surging to record highs were also very welcome birthday presents— which suggests the markets believe the war has been good for us.

One reason for soaring market confidence might be that President Trump even called the New York Times to announce the deal in a voluntary 28-minute interview that he initiated. Trump seemed to understand that something more was needed than another signal of a potential deal.

“Speaking on his 80th birthday,” the Times reported, “as his family could be heard gathering in the background for a celebratory dinner,” the President told reporters that face-to-face meetings to finalize the agreement are expected to start on Friday in Switzerland. He thanked Presidents Xi (China) and Putin (Russia) for being “gentlemen” and not interfering with the American operation, and called out Israel’s President Netanyahu as “a very difficult guy.”

Trump also suggested that, if Iran fails to follow through, America would consider permanently policing the Middle East— in exchange for 20% of its total oil revenue. Whether he was serious or just trolling the Times is open for debate. (He admitted no Middle Eastern country had discussed it yet.)

The Times next said that the President reported the two countries are “still negotiating over whether Iran would suspend its enrichment for 20 years.” Trump hinted that “he might settle for a 15-year suspension, but did not want to negotiate via the press”— right after negotiating via the press.

At this point, nobody is foolhardy enough to predict that anything is actually over, since the nebulous ghosts of old unconsummated peace deals ebb and flow with the Persian Gulf tides. But most importantly, President Trump declared the Strait of Hormuz is now open for normal maritime traffic— a first since the “war” began.

Remember— the kinetic phase of the entire Iran “war” was compressed into the 60-day limit of the War Powers Act. It’s the opposite of an endless war. I’ll bet Michelle’s Tahoe that, sometime soon, corporate media experts will start complaining that it was never a “real” war to begin with. Sigh.

Apart from President Trump’s vague description, we don’t yet know any specific terms of “the Deal.” Democrats and the media, which so far have tried to characterize one of the shortest wars in human history as a “forever war,” are preparing to pivot to complaining that “Trump’s peace deal isn’t good enough.”

🔥 You could make a very strong argument that the deal’s terms are irrelevant. They are just the candles on America’s birthday cake. After only two months of fighting from the air, and with fewer casualties than Joe Biden racked up just in his catastrophic scramble to flee Afghanistan or in one drone assault against a Syrian base, Iran has been disciplined, its neighbors stand with America against it, and both its economy and its war aims have been set back 20 years, at least.

Meanwhile, the world’s global energy flows have been permanently restructured in America’s favor. OPEC’s monopoly —a thorn in our collective sides for our entire lives— has been broken and become a spent force. And now, this. Headline from Seeking Alpha, four days ago:

In other words, the world’s former embargo victim is now the swing export superpower— a structural reversal relative to the entire post-1973 energy system, and since long before the Iranian revolution in 1979.

In fact, even before 1973, the U.S. had never held the title of largest exporter. Ever.

One average index fund of U.S.-based global oil companies is up +67% in the last 12 months— with almost the entire increase accruing after the Iran “war” began:

No previous Middle Eastern war shock has ever directly catapulted U.S. producers into the position of top global exporter and sustained profit center. Not the eight-year Iraq war. Not the 20-year war in Afghanistan (the longest war in U.S. history). None produced sustained benefits for America.

And the Iranian conflict was the shortest major action of them all.

No matter how good (or bad) the peace deal’s terms are, the president’s critics will find a way to hate the result. But, and much more significantly, even without knowing a single agreed point, the markets are loving it— and they are the ones that matter, more than the talking-head experts and critics, for sure.

🔥 Let’s number the seven gifts of good fortune that President Trump received on his lucky birthday weekend:

The country threw him a spectacular birthday party on the White House lawn. Biden got a “private family brunch.”

Tumultuous weather drove off mostly peaceful protestors, but then broke at the last possible minute so the show could go on.

In the headline fight, the scrappy 6-to-1 American underdog won, despite being eight years older than the ranking UFC champion.

America’s soccer team crushed its first World Cup game before a wildly patriotic crowd after a losing streak going back to 2002, and captured its first 3-point margin since the Great Depression.

Trump’s hometown NBA team, the Knicks, broke a 53-year losing streak to win the championship, triggering ticker-tape parades and celebrations.

A peace deal with Iran came together— if not ending the conflict, at least bringing it closer to an end than anytime since it began.

The markets surged to new all-time highs, oil prices plunged, and America became the world’s top oil exporter for the first time in history.

Here at C&C, we have often observed that a lucky president is better than a smart president. A president that is both lucky and smart is a generational anomaly, a once-in-a-lifetime blessing that is remarkable both for its rare nature and its ability to shift the board in America’s favor for decades to follow.