Is there an image of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) stage at the White House, featuring a real banner that reads, in part, "Welcome to Costco"? No, that's not true: Although the UFC stage is real, the image contains an AI-generated banner. The fake banner is a reference to a satirical comedy film.
The claim appeared in a post published on Bluesky by the account @mmpadellan on June 4, 2026 (archived here). The post featured an image of the UFC stage on the south lawn of the White House, set up for UFC Freedom 250 (archived here). The banner across the stage read, "Welcome to Costco. I love you." The text in the post read:
I'm old enough to remember when the White House wasn't the trashiest place in America.
This is what the image looked like:
(Image source: Post by @mmpadellan on Bluesky.)
The banner references a scene (archived here) from the 2006 film Idiocracy (archived here), and is not really displayed at the UFC stage.
A similar picture of the temporary stage was published by Getty Images on May 31, 2026 (archived here). The banner is not present in that image. As of June 8, 2026, no "Welcome to Costco" banner has been photographed on the UFC stage (archived here).
The image in the post made on Bluesky contains a Google Gemini watermark in the bottom-right corner. When Gemini, Google's AI assistant, was asked whether the image contained Google AI, the chat answered, "Yes, based on the file's digital watermarks, at least a portion of this image was edited or generated using Google AI" (archived here). Google developed SynthID, an invisible watermark that can identify content generated by the company's AI (archived here).
Lead Stories previously debunked other claims about the UFC event at the White House. Those can be found here, here, and here.
