{"id":678242,"date":"2026-11-08T02:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-11-08T02:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/678242\/"},"modified":"2026-11-08T02:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-11-08T02:56:08","slug":"trump-offers-ufc-boss-dana-white-press-secretary-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/678242\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump offers UFC boss Dana White press secretary role"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>US President Donald Trump said he has asked mixed martial arts executive and &#8220;violent fighter&#8221; Dana White to serve as White House press secretary.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;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,&#8221;Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social account.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Dana, please take the job!&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>While Mr White did not explicitly accept the job, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) boss posted an image, possibly AI-generated, of himself behind the lectern in the White House press briefing room, captioned &#8220;On to the next chapter.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The White House has been without a press secretary since 16 October when Katie Zacharia left the position after less than a week.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia \" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/00252fb0-614.jpg\"\/><br \/>\nKatie Zacharia left the role after scrutiny over her credentials<\/p>\n<p>Mr White, 57, is president and CEO of the UFC, the largest and most successful mixed martial arts organisation in the world.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Trump also asked for six UFC fighters to join Mr White, including athletes from Russia&#8217;s Dagestan region, Islam Makhachev and Khabib Nurmagomedov, Americans Justin Gaethje and Daniel Cormier, and &#8220;Kayla Harris&#8221;, likely a reference to Kayla Harrison.<\/p>\n<p>He also mentioned Amanda Nunes, a Brazilian native who became a US citizen last year.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We need these people to defend us against the Lunatic Left,&#8221; Mr Trump wrote.<\/p>\n<p>The White House amplified the announcement by publishing a screenshot of the president&#8217;s post on one of its official accounts.<\/p>\n<p>The US president and Mr White are friends, and Mr Trump has often sought to associate his MAGA movement with the hugely popular UFC.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"US President Donald Trump stands in The Octagon with UFC CEO Dana White\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/00248519-614.jpg\"\/><br \/>\nOn Donald Trump&#8217;s 80th birthday in June, the UFC held an event on the White House South Lawn<\/p>\n<p>The US leader has also attended bouts in Miami, New York and New Jersey since beginning his second term in the White House.<\/p>\n<p>The White House press office already has a former UFC spokesperson in White House Director of Communications Steven Cheung, who worked for the UFC from 2013 to 2016.<\/p>\n<p>When Mr Trump won re-election in 2024, Dana White appeared alongside him for his victory speech.<\/p>\n<p>Mr White has also joined the board of directors of Meta, a move that some commentators viewed as a sign of the tech company&#8217;s conservative shift.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US President Donald Trump said he has asked mixed martial arts executive and &#8220;violent fighter&#8221; Dana White to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":678243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-678242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=678242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/678243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}