President Trump endorsed Representative Mike Collins on Sunday in the Republican Senate primary runoff in Georgia, choosing a loyalist and immigration hard-liner over a former football coach who had angled for his support.
By backing Mr. Collins over Derek Dooley, a former football coach at the University of Tennessee, Mr. Trump gives the congressman a major lift as he seeks to win the nomination to take on Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, in one of the nation’s most competitive midterm battlegrounds.
“Mike Collins is a true Friend, Fighter, and WARRIOR, who has been with us from the very beginning, and has my Complete and Total Endorsement to be your next United States Senator,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social early Sunday morning, two days before the runoff.
Mr. Collins led Mr. Dooley by about 10 percentage points in an initial round of primary voting in mid-May that included another Trump acolyte, Representative Buddy Carter. Opinion polls have shown Mr. Collins leading Mr. Dooley in the head-to-head matchup.
But Mr. Dooley has the backing of Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, a popular Republican, and Republican strategists in the state had said they expected the runoff to be close. Mr. Trump’s endorsement, which has proved immensely powerful in Republican primary after Republican primary in recent weeks, could scramble that calculus.
Mr. Collins, a trucking executive with a history of incendiary social media posts, sponsored the first bill Mr. Trump signed after returning to the presidency. The congressman’s campaign has also brought on some of the president’s political advisers, including Mr. Trump’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio, and Tim Saler, a data analyst for his 2024 campaign.
Mr. Dooley had worked to appeal to the president by visiting the White House for a lengthy meeting last summer and using a campaign slogan, “Georgia First,” that echoed the president’s “America First” message. Mr. Trump has a history of warming to sports figures who enter politics.
But Mr. Dooley’s chief political patron, Governor Kemp, has had a tumultuous relationship with the president after refusing to join Mr. Trump’s effort to reverse the 2020 presidential election. As recently as 2024, Mr. Trump publicly referred to Mr. Kemp as a “bad guy,” though they smoothed out their public relationship by the election that year. Mr. Kemp has invested heavily in the race, joining Mr. Dooley at dozens of campaign events across the state.
In his post, Mr. Trump wrote that Mr. Dooley “seems like a nice person.” He then returned to his false claims that he carried Georgia in the 2020 election, writing disapprovingly that Mr. Dooley “said that I lost Georgia in 2020.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump celebrates turning 80 on Sunday with a showstopping birthday spectacle that once would have seemed unfathomable: a cage-fighting show on the storied South Lawn of the White House.
This week, the hard realities of the office have threatened to overshadow the ostentatious UFC mixed martial arts extravaganza, where combatants sealed inside a wire-mesh octagon try to punch, kick, chop and pummel each other into submission.
Trump has found himself boxed into an unpopular and costly war he helped start in Iran. An agreement to end the conflict could be close, but the crucial details are still to be negotiated. Meanwhile, about a mile from Trump’s birthday bash, crews pried the president’s name off the Kennedy Center after a judge ruled naming it after Trump had gone too far.
Regardless, the president will walk out of the White House and be surrounded by Cabinet leaders, top administration officials, Republican lawmakers and 4,000-plus spectators screaming themselves hoarse in a temporary arena under “ The Claw,” a spaceship-like metal arch fitted with lighting, sound equipment and large screens. Thousands more will be watching on big screens from the nearby Ellipse.
“This event is a one of one event, incredible event. I love it,” said UFC chief Dana White, a close friend of the president, during a Friday night hype session at the Lincoln Memorial where pairs of fighters shoved and scuffled for the cameras under the stoic gaze of Honest Abe’s marble likeness.
The president has sought to tie Sunday’s event — which features seven fights running past midnight — to larger, months-long celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
But it is much more geared toward feting himself, so much so that the G7 summit for leaders of industrialized nations pushed back their get-together so that the president could attend his cage-match party and then fly straight to France for the meetings.
The weather, though, could put a major damper on things. Strong thunderstorms and heavy lightning disrupted Friday’s Lincoln Memorial event, and the forecast for Sunday evening also looks threatening.
“I’m sick and tired of hearing about the weather,” White declared on Friday, before conceding that he’ll prefer to hold future UFC events inside arenas only.
A dramatic departure from how the last president marked his 80th
When Trump’s predecessor, President Joe Biden, turned 80 in November 2022, he celebrated with a private family brunch at the White House, laying bare just how much and how quickly things have changed.
Asked about the contrast, White House spokesperson Allison Schuster said that the fight “will be one of the most entertaining nights in American history” and said that the timing was appropriate. “Having this spectacle take place at the people’s house on Flag Day during our nations’ semiquincentennial anniversary is a fitting tribute,” Schuster said in a statement.
When he turned 80, Biden was the oldest president in U.S. history, and was months away from launching a reelection bid that he would ultimately abandon after a disastrous debate against Trump and mutiny among Democrats concerned he was too old to handle a second term.
Trump has now supplanted Biden as the oldest person to be elected U.S. president. He’s constitutionally barred from running again, yet constantly toys with the notion publicly. That’s despite polls showing rising public skepticism about Trump’s mental and physical health — recalling concerns Biden faced as he turned 80.
A Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted in April found that less than half of U.S. adults think Trump has the mental sharpness or physical health to serve effectively as president.
The White House countered with a lengthy statement from Trump’s former White House physician, Texas Republican Rep. Ronny Jackson, saying Trump’s “stamina, focus, and strength are exceptional and on display every day. Claims to the contrary are pure fiction.” Jackson added that polling concerns were “being propagated by the same biased, liberal, Trump-hating press that completely ignored the absolute cognitive and physical disaster that was President Biden.”
Trump has nonetheless undergone four publicly announced physical examinations this term alone, with White House physician Dr. Sean Barbabella recently declaring him in “excellent health.”
‘Bread and circuses’ — Trump-style
The UFC event is an apt metaphor for Trump’s pugilistic political style. He is as big a fan of cage-match-style politics as he is of cage-fighting itself.
But Trump has also long been a master of political misdirection, purposely presenting people with something other than his presidency to focus on when things aren’t going well.
With the war in Iran grinding on despite weeks of assurances from Trump that its end is nigh, gas prices staying high, renewed concerns about inflation and plummeting job approval ratings for Trump — a White House birthday party unlike anything America has ever seen is definitely a diversion.
“This is all distraction,” said Mike Fontaine, a classics professor at Cornell University, who likened it to the gladiatorial games of Imperial Rome, when combatants brutalized each other for public entertainment meant to bolster rulers’ popularity and quell potential unrest.
“This is a classic strategy,” Fontaine said. “In ancient Rome, the phrase would be, ‘bread and circuses.’”
Trump says the UFC is paying for the event and while its full costs haven’t been divulged, the National Park Service said in a court filing that $60-plus million and tens of thousands of hours of labor have gone into it, while seven government agencies have “allocated significant resources and manpower.”
UFC also announced on Friday that it was adding as an official partner for the event World Liberty Financial to create a special $250,000 athlete bonus pool for Sunday night’s winners. The cryptocurrency company is co-owned by the Trump family, founded with the president’s special diplomatic envoy Steve Witkoff and run by his son, Zach. The arrangement further blurs lines between the Trump family’s financial interests and the events and construction projects the president has prioritized and used government resources to pull off.
Still, Fontaine said that when it comes to a personal flair for pageantry, the president’s second-term tendency to lean into “hardcore masculinity and brute fighting” is marrying the UFC’s blood sport with Trump’s trademark humor and enduring sense of showmanship.
“President Trump has a once-in-a-generation talent for this stuff,” he said.

Donald Trump says a deal with Iran to end the war would be signed on Sunday, and that the strait of Hormuz would be “open to all” immediately after.
Iran had offered a different timeline earlier in the day, but nonetheless signalled an agreement was in the offing, as both the warring parties and their mediators expressed increasing optimism that weeks of halting negotiations were drawing to a close.
“The Deal is scheduled to get signed tomorrow, and immediately after it is signed, the Hormuz Strait is OPEN TO ALL,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform. Since an 8 April truce paused the worst of the fighting, Trump has repeatedly insisted a deal was near only for the wrangling to drag on.
The Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmaeil Baqaei, had said earlier on Saturday that the date of the signing was yet to be determined, but “it will not be tomorrow”. However, he added: “The possibility of this happening in the coming days cannot be ruled out.”

Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, has just finished a 25-minute address and most of the hits have been played. The radical Democrats must be destroyed in November’s midterms; an Austin-style woke agenda should be avoided at all costs; it is essential the Lone Star State remains the most conservative in the US. He has provided ample fodder for about 5,000 delegates but, as the applause subsides, they have a more weighty subject matter to absorb.
There is an elephant in the room. A real live elephant in the form of Paige, who is wearing a white cloak bearing the slogan “Unity drives victory”. It has long been an in-joke at the Texas Republican party convention that, one day, a pachydermal visitor might drop in; the animal has been a symbol of the GOP for 150 years. Now, at the George R. Brown Convention Center on Friday afternoon, the fantasy has been made flesh. To intakes of breath, Paige is led up the vast conference hall’s central aisle, taking a break halfway up. The exit is 100 metres away but will have to wait; unfortunately for those who have rushed to marvel at her, it turns out Paige needs to urinate.
Houston is making its debut as a World Cup host city but, in this bubble of largely hard-line activists drawn from some of the state’s furthest corners, football’s proximity is largely viewed as an irrelevance. “You won’t find soccer fans here, we’re here for business,” says Jo, who has travelled from Dallas and wears a sequin-heavy stars and stripes dress. “I don’t mind it, but I’m not remotely into it.”
The next morning they are back at George R Brown Convention Centre to do it all again. They walk through the doors past children, no older than nine or 10, who wear T-shirts emblazoned with “Make abolishing abortion our number one legislative priority.” The youngsters hand out fliers and then, inside the hall, comes the daylong process of refining the party’s proposed platform for the next election cycle. Texas has been in a vice-like Republican grip for more than three decades but the past year has been fraught with infighting; the congress is peppered with pleas for unity and Abbott’s rare presence among these grassroots representatives is viewed as an endorsement of its shift further right.
Michael, from the town of Abilene, six hours’ drive away, steps out of the room during a particularly heated discussion about the wording of the party’s abortion policy. Someone has just suggested men recuse themselves from any vote regarding amendments. “It’s getting a little contentious in there,” he says, understatedly. The World Cup has barely reached his radar, although he is aware of the USA’s 4-1 win against Paraguay the previous night. It is unclear whether Houston or Dallas will make a profit from host city-status and he is concerned about any impact on public finances.
“I think there’s a whole lot of money in soccer and they should pay their own way,” he says. “We, the taxpayer, shouldn’t be shouldering the burden.” Michael is wearing a ‘MAGA 2024’ cap. Does he feel comfortable with Donald Trump’s appropriation of a tournament that will touch few in the Texas GOP? “It’s just what he does, he’s a bit of a showman,” he laughs. A man wearing a Stetson and leather waistcoat, a large knife sheathed by his left hip, walks past as he speaks.
As the session breaks for lunch, Steve, who is sporting a “Defend Texas, Defeat Sharia” badge, admits he feels the future is precarious. “I’m scared about the midterms,” he says. “If we lose the House and Senate, our president’s not going to be effective any more.” He embarks upon an analysis of the United Kingdom’s immigration challenges that would not pass a fact check. Maybe he will find a new interest this summer. “Because of the World Cup we watched it last night,” he says. “It was fun. It’s a long time since I last watched soccer.”
Perhaps a current of enthusiasm can be mustered here, after all. “I think it’s awesome, I really wanted to go,” says Ray, from Corpus Christi. He looked into attending a game but balked at the $1,100 quoted for a ticket. “How often do you get an event that brings people together from all over the world?” he asks. Does such an admirable sentiment square with the actions of a government that has, to many eyes, made this edition of the tournament less open and accessible than any other in the modern era?
“We can’t shut down the whole world because of a few things going on,” he says. “But after 9/11 we had to pay a lot more attention to our surroundings. Soccer helps us keep a good relationship with other countries”. Ray is relaxed about the prospect of Iran playing games in the US but has few regrets about Trump’s decision to engage in military conflict. “It’s something we needed to do to get global security under control,” he claims. Like others willing to discuss the topic, though, he is concerned about the effect of a lengthy war on fuel prices.
It feels, at least, as if the quest to find a genuine football supporter is warming up. Finally it bears something fruit-adjacent in the form of Jacovia, one of the few Black delegates present. “Me and my friends go and watch some Houston Dynamo games, it’s fun,” he says. “I’m a fan of the sport but I don’t really understand it.”
Jacovia rejects the idea his country has put up the drawbridge to outsiders. “I think that perception is unfair,” he says. “I know there’s going to be pockets of terrible people that aren’t welcoming, but they don’t account for the majority of us.”
None of those who spoke to the Guardian had engaged with the plight of the Somali referee Omar Artan, who was barred from entry to the US. “It’s an older crowd here, if they’ll watch anything it’s American football” says 72-year-old Patti, who takes pains to explain the intricacies of Saturday’s proceedings. They are peppered with speeches from the floor, ranging from the considered to the incendiary. A woman is jeered loudly for saying men should not be allowed parenting responsibility after a divorce; two people towards the back come to blows when a proposed amendment to protect against antisemitism is struck out. There are more boos at the mention of Tucker Carlson, the conservative podcaster; everyone rallies round again when the hawkish Texas senator Ted Cruz, whose public feud with Carlson over Iran continues to rumble, takes the stage.
In the adjacent exhibition hall, visitors can sign up to the Patriot Mobile network, hear the claims of Texans For Vaccine Choice or download Abbott’s own app. All of conservative southern American life is here: disarmingly filter-free, deeply ideological, confounding and in parts deeply disturbing. Football and the World Cup, though, remain beyond the periphery.
“It’s growing, it’s definitely growing,” says Steve. At the Texas GOP convention, that is happening at an elephant’s pace.

Platner’s backers in Maine say with Trump in office and Senate control on the line, the bar is low and the stakes are high: “Purity politics don’t get us anywhere.”
June 13, 2026 at 6:00 a.m. EDTYesterday at 6:00 a.m. EDT
BAR HARBOR, Maine — As Democrats wrestle with the past behavior of their Senate candidate in Maine, one name keeps coming up: Donald Trump.
The president lowered the bar, some liberal voters and lawmakers argue, when he won the highest office in the land despite facing allegations of misconduct from multiple women and being caught on tape bragging about grabbing women’s genitals. The stakes, they say, are too high to obsess over a candidate’s past when flipping control of the Senate to Democrats would give the country a needed check on the president.