Trump asks UFC chief Dana White to be press secretary

President Donald Trump has publicly asked UFC chief Dana White to become White House press secretary, calling on his longtime ally to bring six fighters with him to help “defend us against the Lunatic Left.” It remains unclear whether the offer is a serious proposal.

“Dana will be a Press Secretary like none other,” Trump wrote in a Saturday post on Truth Social. “Dana, please take the job!” He described White as “a violent Fighter and Warrior” and said the fighters should join him “even though some are not from our Country.”

The BBC said it had asked the White House and TKO Holdings, the UFC’s parent company, for comment. The Guardian reported no immediate response from White to the offer, while the BBC reported that White posted an Instagram photo of himself behind the podium in the White House press briefing room with the caption, “On to the next chapter.” The meaning of White’s post was unclear.

The White House press secretary position has been vacant since mid-October, when Katie Zacharia left after just a few days in the job, according to the BBC. Trump’s appeal to White followed midterm elections in which Republicans lost their congressional majorities.

The Guardian identified the six fighters pictured in Trump’s post as Islam Makhachev, Khabib Nurmagomedov, Justin Gaethje, Daniel Cormier, Amanda Nunes and Kayla Harrison. Trump rendered Harrison’s surname as “Harris,” the newspaper reported. Makhachev and Nurmagomedov are both from Russia. The Guardian also reported that one of the images accompanying the post appeared to be AI-generated and showed White behind the presidential seal in a press room.

White has long supported Trump. He spoke at Republican National Conventions in 2016, 2020 and 2024, and campaigned for Trump in 2024. The UFC staged a cage-fighting event on the White House lawn in June to mark Trump’s 80th birthday, according to The Guardian.

Their relationship stretches back to the UFC’s early years under White and his business partners, who bought the struggling organization for $2 million in 2001. At the time, mixed martial arts faced bans in 36 states after Republican Senator John McCain had called it “human cockfighting,” the BBC reported. White credits Trump with helping the organization by hosting two UFC events at his Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, that year.

“None of the venues wanted [the UFC],” White told CBS in 2025. “They didn’t believe in it. They didn’t like it, and they were worried about the type of crowd that would show up for this type of event.”

White has also clashed with journalists covering the sport. The BBC reported that he released a video criticizing reporters who questioned the UFC’s decision to stage fights early in the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2009, he posted an expletive-laden video that used an anti-gay slur while disputing a journalist’s report about UFC credentialing rules.