President Donald Trump made it official on Friday – there will be an IndyCar race in the D.C. city streets this summer to mark the country’s 250th birthday. Trump held an event in the Oval Office alongside Roger Penske, a racing great who chairs the Penske Corporation, and signed an executive order to get the race in place. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who was in the Oval alongside his Fox News host wife Rachel Campos-Duffy, said the president had tasked him to ‘think outside the box’ and do something ‘historic and cool.’ Duffy didn’t realize that Penske’s company was already trying to get Washington, D.C. to host a race, which is now being dubbed the Freedom 250 Grand Prix.
‘But to think, 190 miles per hour down PennsylvaniaAvenue, this is going to be wild,’ Duffy said. The Transportation Secretary noted how the last race hosted in the streets of Washington was in 1801, when President Thomas Jefferson hosted a horse race. The race track is slated to be in place from August 21-23 with the main race taking place on August 23. ‘And they’re going to put up something that’s really amazing,’ Trump gushed. ‘It’s really having to do with our great 250th birthday. We’re having so many wonderful things.’
White House Releases AI-Generated Preview of Race
Shortly after the announcement, the White House put out an AI-generated video of what the race could look like. It included eagles flying alongside Marine One as Trump arrived at the racetrack – set up outside the U.S. Capitol Building – with the president then waving the green flag. The video showed several military flyovers, including of a B-2 bomber. The AI-generated Duffy was waving the checkered flag to end the grand prix. Trump has backed a number of interesting events and projects as part of the America250 celebration.
White House Plans to Host UFC Fight
The White House plans to host a series of Ultimate Fighting Championship matches on the South Lawn in conjunction with Trump’s 80th birthday on June 14. ‘UFC is coming, as you know, in front of the White House, we’re building literally a stadium over 100,000 people,’ Trump said Friday. The president is a close friend of UFC CEO Dana White. Trump has traveled to watch a number of UFC fights and White introduced Trump when he delivered his keynote speech at the 2024 Republican National Convention.
The president, who demolished the White House’s East Wing to make room for a gilded ballroom, is also working on a construction project in conjunction with America250. He’s planning to build a ‘triumphant arch’ – which has been nicknamed the ‘Arc de Trump’ across the Arlington Memorial Bridge, to serve as a gateway to Washington, D.C. Last Friday, Trump posted to Truth Social three renderings of the triumphal arch, including one that was partially covered in gold.
In the gilded version, the structure has been renamed ‘the independence arch.’ America250 celebrations have already started kicking off around the country. In Washington, D.C. that included a projector show on the Washington Monument and a Monday night fireworks display, which spooked some District residents because it came on the heels of Trump’s decision to capture and imprison Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro.
