Serena Williams’ husband scrambled to excuse his attendance at President Trump’s 80th birthday party at the White House.
The UFC Freedom 250 card unfolded on the South Lawn of the White House on Sunday. Organizers staged the event, supposedly to mark the quarter-millennium since America’s founding, three weeks early to rather more auspiciously coincide with the president’s birthday.
Williams’ husband, internet entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian, 43, says he attended the event at the invitation of TKO, the company behind UFC, which is run by MAGA ally Dana White.
The tacky spectacle reached its nadir when heavyweight Josh Hokit beat Derrick Lewis and then used a post-fight interview with Joe Rogan to accuse former first lady Michelle Obama of being a man.
Reddit co-founder Ohanian—who has two daughters with Williams, whom he married in 2017—stayed quiet about the slur for three days. He finally addressed the furor on X late Wednesday night.
“Lot of people asking me to comment: Yes, that fighter’s slur about former First Lady Michelle Obama was vile and inappropriate,” Ohanian wrote.
“I attended the UFC event via invitation from TKO/IMG leadership (I own 5 pro sports teams + a league). I was already on my way home when those comments were made,” he added, saying he was “glad” that Dana White had condemned Hokit’s slur.
For added cover, Ohanian noted he had quit Reddit to force the platform to crack down on offensive and dangerous content. “I resigned in protest from Reddit (the company I co-founded and built for over a decade) specifically to push it to curb communities for hate and violence on the site,” he wrote.
Replying to one user who questioned why he would have left before Hokit’s fight, Ohanian wrote: “I was walking out because it was like 11:00 [p.m.] and I was on Europe time.”
Ohanian had flown to London earlier in the week to watch Williams, 44, return to tennis at the Queen’s Club Championships.
Social media users weren’t buying Ohanian’s excuses.
“Great example for your daughters,” one person said. “You know what to expect from that crowd.”
“It took you four days to come up with this bs statement??” another added. “As a white man married to a Black woman and the father of two Black girls, your a– shouldn’t have attended that klan fest PERIOD.”
“You shouldn’t have been there,” a third chimed in. “You’re an epic disappointment. With a dynamic and conscious Black wife and Black children being harmed by this administration, you put your cronies over your family AND this country. Shame on you.”
Ohanian is only the latest public figure to draw fire for attending the event—and few have felt the heat worse than comedian Nate Bargatze.
The 47-year-old SNL alum, who has long sold himself as a comic who keeps clear of politics, was caught beaming next to MAGA royalty and the Trump family across a run of photos that kicked off a brutal pile-on from his bitterly disappointed followers.
He then leaned on unnamed “sources” to tell the Daily Beast he was nothing more than a fight fan—an attempted deflection that only stoked further disbelief. Four days on, the highest-grossing stand-up of 2024 has said nothing about showing his face at the bash.
Fellow comedian Shane Gillis was also among those slammed for putting in an appearance. Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, who hugged Trump cageside, took heat from both the left and MAGA loyalist Laura Loomer, who posted that she’d hoped he would be in jail by now.
The Zac Brown Band is similarly under fire for singing the national anthem ahead of the event, with frontman Zac Brown casting their performance as “patriotism, not politics.”
The Daily Beast has contacted Ohanian’s investment firm for further comment on this story.
