Trump fixated on 'deeply weird' 80th birthday present to himself: insiders

President Donald Trump is poised to celebrate his 80th birthday this Sunday with an unprecedented Ultimate Fighting Championship bout at the White House, but according to Zeteo, the president is still musing about expanding his birthday celebrations to a national scale.

“As the birthday boy gears up for his party, we feel compelled to remind you of a remarkably sad fact: Yes, President Trump really does want to make his birthday a federal holiday,” Zeteo’s Asawin Suebsaeng wrote in the outlet’s report published on Friday.

“Whether he ever makes it happen, he’s got some Republican allies on Capitol Hill who would clearly like to help him pull it off.”

Zeteo first reported back in March that on separate occasions throughout 2025, Trump had talked with “longtime advisers” about making his birthday a federal holiday. Those talks have apparently continued through 2026, expanded to include Republican lawmakers, and occurred with such frequency that some have coined a phrase to refer to the discussion topic.

“The birthday thing,” one source familiar with the matter told Zeteo, speaking on the condition of anonymity, referring to Trump’s “casual” talks with GOP lawmakers about making his birthday a federal holiday.

Suebsaeng argued the notion would have seemed "deeply weird" at the start of Trump's first term – but enacting it in 2026, he wrote, was outright "disturbing."

“It would be deeply weird for a political party to fortify this kind of personality cult for a president whose approval rating hovered at the 60s, as President Barack Obama’s did when he left office and Trump took over the first time,” Suebsaeng wrote.

“It is much, much more surreal and disturbing for a party to be doing this for a guy whose numbers are stuck in the low-to-mid 30s. It is more deranged than if Hollywood super-agents mounted a serious awards-season push to get ‘Freddy Got Fingered’ an Oscar. And yet here we are! Happy birthday, I guess?”