Will the real Jon Favreau please stand up?
Former speechwriter for Barack Obama and Pod Save America co-host Jon Favreau thinks there may have been a mix-up after he received an email invite to attend Donald Trump’s UFC fight event at the White House. The anti-MAGA host believes he was mistaken for “the Iron Man Jon Favreau,” he said, as he read the email on the latest episode of the podcast.
“For the first time ever, I will reveal a secret I’ve been keeping and tell the story of how I was invited, actually invited, to the White House UFC fight,” he prefaced before reading the invite. “I’m just gonna read aloud to all of you an email I received on March 25th,” he said in the episode, during which he was joined by former MSNBC host Alex Wagner.
“It’s from TKO Events, and the subject line of the email is UFC Freedom 250: ‘Jon, we are honored to invite you to UFC Freedom 250 on Sunday, June 14th, a special evening celebrating our country. We need your RSVP by Tuesday, March 31st, as there are significant logistics with the White House. More details to follow,’” he read.
Trump commissioned a 5,000-seat arena on the White House South Lawn, as well as an 87-foot UFC Octagon and 90-foot-tall arch, for his UFC Freedom 250 on June 14 to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday and his own 80th. The $60 million project, which UFC President Dana White insisted would not use taxpayer money, has been highly criticized for its “tackiness” and timing, as Americans wade through an ongoing affordability crisis due to Trump’s War in Iran.
Favreau, as a relentless Trump critic, is an unlikely choice for an attendee, even with reports that the military is begging hundreds of troops to fill the seats.
“So I saw this, and it was like, is this a joke? Did someone prank me? And why am I invited to the White House?” Favreau wondered aloud on Friday. After doing some “digging,” the former Obama aide said he eventually figured out that the company may have been trying to reach Jon Favreau, the director of The Mandalorian and Grogu, who is known for his iconic role as “Happy” in Iron Man and his longstanding love for UFC.
The Daily Beast has reached out to TKO Events and a representative for Favreau for comment.
Pod Save America’s Favreau said he wasn’t about to let a perfectly good invite go to waste.
“I RSVP’d,” he said, “Because I thought, f--- it, I’m going to the White House and I’m gonna go in there, and I’m gonna check it out. Maybe I’ll see my buddy Stephen Miller or my friend JD Vance and chat them up,” he said, humorously nodding to his social media feuds with the White House deputy chief of staff and the vice president.
Favreau made plans to attend, in tandem with his plans the following day to visit Chicago for the Obama Presidential Center and Museum: “Probably not too many people going to both of those things,” he said.
But after he sent in his RSVP—with his own, different, middle name from director Jon Favreau—he received a disappointing email.
“Our sincerest apologies,” the email read, “but we’ve just discovered there was a miscommunication about our allotted number of guest invitations…Unfortunately, as a result, we are under-allotted and no longer able to accommodate your attendance.”
Favreau concluded, “F---, I was so close. They got me.”
