“I’ve ALWAYS wanted to do this! WHO has the first question?!” That is how Dana White opened his turn at the White House briefing room podium on Monday, according to Eric Daugherty, who quoted the UFC CEO as he walked out next to President Donald Trump. “The joke became reality!” Daugherty wrote on X.
The joke started over the weekend. On Nov. 7, Pop Base and The Spectator Index both posted on X that Trump had offered White the job of White House press secretary. A day later, Trump partly walked it back. Daugherty posted Trump’s explanation: “I WAS only kidding, but Dana LOVES the idea. You wouldn’t mess around with him so much!” Trump also said, per the same post, “That was an example of something where I was kidding, and then people said, you know, that’s actually a pretty good idea!”
So White flew in and took questions. A Newswav headline said Trump brought him up to field questions on Pete Hegseth and an Nvidia scandal, which is a tougher card than anything White deals with at a fight-week presser. NXS Media Wire also reported on the joint briefing.
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The tryout did not end in a contract. Aaron Rupar wrote on X that Trump’s “bizarre press briefing ends with Dana White turning down the press secretary job.”
For anyone who only knows White from post-fight scrums, his résumé is already crowded. He has run the UFC since Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta bought it for $2 million in 2001 and named him president. He co-created The Ultimate Fighter in 2004, the reality show that pushed the promotion into the mainstream, and he stayed on after the 2016 sale to a WME-IMG-led consortium for $4 billion. He became CEO in 2023 when ownership was reorganized into TKO Group Holdings.
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The outside ventures keep piling up. White founded Power Slap in 2022, joined Meta’s board of directors in 2025 and co-founded Zuffa Boxing the same year, where he serves as promoter. Forbes estimated his net worth at over $600 million in 2025.
Monday’s appearance put a man who usually answers questions about judging, pay and title shots in front of the White House press corps, with the president standing beside him. Daugherty had written before the briefing, “Let Dana have at least ONE ROUND with the fake news at the podium.” He got exactly that, and per Rupar, one round was all White wanted. He goes back to the UFC, Power Slap and Zuffa Boxing with the press secretary job declined.
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