President Donald Trump says he’s offered UFC CEO Dana White the job of White House press secretary.
The offer to the world-famous fight wrangler comes days after a bruising midterm election for Trump’s party, during which the Democrats took control of both houses of Congress and a handful of key governorships.
“I am pleased to announce that 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 on Saturday.
In the same post, Trump also said he requested White bring some of his “assistants,” who are all mixed martial artists, “even though some are not from our country.”
“We need these people to defend us against the Lunatic Left. Dana, please take the job!” the president wrote.
White nor the White House immediately responded to a request for comment. White posted to his Instagram story Saturday afternoon a photo of himself behind the White House press room lectern with the caption, “Onto the next chapter.”
The offer comes weeks after Katie Zacharia replaced Karoline Leavitt as press secretary, only to be forced out five days later in what was the shortest tenure for the role on record, beating Anthony Scaramucci’s famously short stint of 11 days.
Trump and White have a decadeslong friendship that dates back to the early 2000s, when Trump, then a casino magnate, offered the UFC his Taj Mahal as a venue. In the 1990s, the UFC had been run out of Las Vegas for being too violent.
UFC’s new owners appointed White the organization’s president a month before the Trump-hosted fight in Atlantic City. “Nobody took us seriously,” White has said. “Except Donald Trump.”
White has been a vocal and financial supporter of Trump’s political campaigns ever since. Most recently, Trump hosted a UFC fight on the White House lawn in June, during which UFC fighter Josh Hokit thanked the president for “having the balls to put some shit like this on.”
