Dana White details the insane whirlwind week after US President Donald Trump posted on social media claiming the UFC CEO is the new White House press secretary.
The whole thing it was just a joke but it resulted in a mountain of media attention. A few days after Trump’s announcement White appeared in the press room for a mock meeting with the president and the media. In a new interview with Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump on FOX News, White described how the whole thing worked out for her.
“Well, I was in a fight in London,” White said. “And he called me and basically said, ‘Hey, I told the press that you’re going to be the next press secretary.’ He laughed and I hadn’t even thought about how that would be. An hour later, my man Hunter (Campbell), who’s my right-hand man in the UFC, calls me and says, “This is the biggest story in America right now. It’s everywhere. And then Lenay, my publicist, said, ‘Every news outlet in the world is calling right now.’
“It’s an incredible experience for me, like again,” White said of the briefing room event. “(Becoming friends with Trump) has had such crazy things happen in my life. But it was a very, very cool experience.”
Although White and the UFC have enjoyed a lot of positive things because of his close friendship with Trump, he acknowledged that there could be trouble after a disastrous midterm election result that saw the Republican president lose control of the House and Senate for the final two years of his term.
“There’s been a lot of people on the Democratic side who have said after their midterm victory that they want to target the president,” Lara Trump said. “They want to target companies that have worked with him and allies of President Trump. Are you at all concerned about those people being targeted?”
“Well, I mean, we expected it,” White replied. “If you didn’t do anything illegal or anything wrong, I don’t know why you should worry. And I’ve never done anything in the political world that would be illegal if someone were to come after me or something that we have to cover up. So yeah, I’m looking forward to it, but no, I’m not worried about it.”
“You will never see me involved in politics,” he said. “I want nothing to do with politics.”