Dana White’s “violent” nature makes him a good candidate for press secretary, per Trump.Alex Brandon/AP
President Donald Trump wants Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White to be the White House press secretary, he announced Saturday.
“The Great Dana White, a violent Fighter and Warrior, has been offered the job of Press Secretary of the United States,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. He also asked White to bring various muscle-bound prizefighters to the White House as assistants, presumably so that if a journalist asks a tough question, those prizefighters could then put them in a headlock.
“I have requested that he bring with him assistants, even though some are not from our Country, of Islam Makhachev, Khabib Nurmagomedov, Justin Gaethje, Daniel Cormier, Amanda Nunes, and Kayla Harris,” Trump wrote, misspelling the name of UFC fighter Kayla Harrison. “We need these people to defend us against the Lunatic Left.”
White, who has no fighting record or governmental record, has owned UFC since 2001. If he accepts the job, he would be Trump’s seventh press secretary, replacing Katie Zacharia, who lasted just under a week on the job before being fired by Trump on October 19th.
It is unclear how White’s potential position in the federal government would impact his other roles, such as co-leader of Zuffa Boxing, a joint venture with the head of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority. But it would not be Trump’s first collaboration with this magnate of the combat arts. In June, White’s company built a tarantula-like stage on the White House lawn to host a birthday cage fight for the President. (“It will never happen again,” White said afterwards.)
Beyond that, “the UFC and Dana White arguably helped Trump get elected,” as Kyle Green, a sociologist at SUNY Brockport who writes on the intersection of sports and politics, told my colleague Inae Oh in June. “They put him in contact with Joe Rogan, who puts him in contact with all the other podcast bros. That really helped Trump, especially in the last election.” Likewise, Green said, the UFC can attribute much of its newfound mainstream popularity to having a fan in the White House.
“Dana, please take the job!” Trump wrote Saturday. It is not known as of this writing whether White has accepted the position.
