Ex-Trump aide gets CNN smackdown as he calls Trump party criticism 'elitist'

CNN's Audie Cornish was caught off guard by a former Donald Trump official's response to criticism of the president's plans for his 80th birthday celebration.

An octagon-shaped cage is being erected on the White House South Lawn to host next month's UFC bout marking the nation's 250th anniversary and the president's birthday, and mixed martial arts analyst Luke Thomas addressed some of the concerns about the hulking structure and the event itself.

"It seems a little classist to me, to be perfectly honest," Thomas said. "It's not that I'm opposed to the arguments that – for example, I've lived in Washington, D.C., on and off, since the 1980s, and I grew, I learned how to swim at East Potomac Park. My daughter had her second birthday there. You know, the fact that he's taking that over or that he's painting the bottom of the Reflecting Pool blue or he's putting his name on the Kennedy Center.

"These are things that you can have a real problem with, or even just a debate or a conversation about, but then calling it tacky or trashy, I'm like, who is this convincing to?" Thomas added. "This is automatically alienating to people who need to understand there's a bigger problem here, which is not so much the event. I don't really have a problem with the event as such. It's the union between the Ultimate Fighting Championship and Trump's politics, or how one enabled the other, and I think that to me is the thing that people should be focused on."

Mike Dubke, who served as White House communications director early in Trump's first term, advanced that argument.

"This is either the people's house or it's not the people's house," Dubke said, "and I think to your point, it's a bit elitist to be really up in arms over all of this."

"Wait, so whose house is it?" Cornish interjected. "It looks like it's Trump's house. It's his birthday party."

"It is," Dubke agreed, but his argument fell apart at that point. "I don't it's an octagon. I think with all the military that's going to be there, it should be a Pentagon birthday. But that's a whole other thing."

Thomas picked up the discussion and made clear the event was centered around the president and his birthday.

"To be clear, it's on Trump's birthday," Thomas said. "I mean, we could dedicate this show to the 250th anniversary of the birth of the nation, that doesn't make it a real celebration of it as such. I mean, I'm sure they might have some genuine intentions, but they moved it originally from a July closer date back to Trump's birthday. I think that like trying to disguise the fact that this is largely about ... magnifying Trump. It's just disingenuous."

- YouTube youtu.be