President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he has offered the White House press secretary job to Dana White, the chief executive of the UFC, and he asked White to bring six mixed martial arts fighters with him as assistants.
White answers: a meeting on Monday
Update, Saturday night: Dana White answered in public for the first time late Saturday, at a news conference in London after a Zuffa Boxing event. He did not say yes, and he did not say no. “I’m flying to Washington DC, right now,” he said. “I have a meeting on Monday, I’m flying to DC right now, and I’m sure we’ll have something to talk about after that.” Asked about fitting the job around his other work, he joked, “I’ve got a lot of jobs already.”
His public words are softer than the reports around him. CNN reported that a source familiar with the matter said White had declined the offer, and one aide said the president was joking. The Washington Post reported that a White House official, speaking without a name attached, also called the offer a joke. White House communications director Steven Cheung, though, reposted the president’s announcement with a “Hell yeah! Do it.”
UPDATE, Saturday evening: Dana White has declined the offer, according to CNN, which cited a source familiar with the matter. White has not announced any decision in public, and neither the White House nor the UFC has commented on the record. CNN also reported that one aide said President Trump was joking about the offer. White House communications director Steven Cheung amplified the post on Saturday, writing, “Hell yeah! Do it, @DanaWhite!” CNN has asked the White House and the UFC for comment.
Trump made the offer in a post on Truth Social, his social media platform. “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,” he wrote.
He said he had asked White to bring Islam Makhachev, Khabib Nurmagomedov, Justin Gaethje, Daniel Cormier, Amanda Nunes and Kayla Harrison as assistants, and he noted that some of them are not from the United States. The fighters were needed, he wrote, to “defend us against the Lunatic Left.” He ended the post: “Dana, please take the job!”
An offer is not an appointment
Nothing in the post says White has accepted, and the White House has not announced any appointment. Hours later, CNN reported that White has declined, citing a source familiar with the matter. The White House did not respond to a request for comment from USA Today, and White and the UFC did not immediately respond to questions from MMA Junkie, part of the USA Today network.
It is also not clear how serious the offer is. Trump often shares jokes and satirical posts on his platform, USA Today noted. White’s first public reaction was playful. On Instagram, he shared the announcement and a photo of himself standing at the White House press podium, with the words “On to the next chapter.” His account on X, meanwhile, was posting only promotions for upcoming UFC fights.
The press secretary speaks for the president and answers questions from reporters at public briefings. The job does not need Senate approval, so a yes from White is all it would take for him to start.
“Yes, this is real. I checked”
For many readers, the first reaction was to ask whether the post was real at all. CNN anchor Jake Tapper shared the screenshot on Instagram with a note of his own on top of it: “Yes this is real I checked.”
Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman and a frequent Trump critic, said in a video that his first thought was that it had to be a joke. “I’m speechless,” he said. “What a clown show.” News commentator Aaron Parnas called the offer “idiocracy” in a reaction video that drew more than 80,000 likes within hours. Under one widely shared Facebook post about the offer, with more than 2,000 comments, readers kept returning to the same comparisons: the satire site The Onion, the film Idiocracy, a circus. Some predicted White would not last long in the job either. Support for the idea was hard to find in the threads checked.
None of the six fighters named in Trump’s post had publicly reacted by Saturday evening.
The betting market had other names
The post spread fast. Polymarket, a prediction market where people bet on future events, flagged the announcement as breaking news on X at 2:10 p.m. on Saturday, and that post had been viewed about 350,000 times by the time it was captured later in the afternoon.
Polymarket’s own market on the next press secretary told a different story about who traders expect to get the job. In its forecast post, Anna Kelly, a deputy press secretary, led at 12 percent and Scott Jennings stood at 6 percent. Dana White was not among the leading names shown.
Why the job is open
The press secretary job has been empty since Oct. 16. Katie Zacharia, the last person to hold it, left after only five days, the shortest time anyone has served in the job. Her only formal briefing lasted 15 minutes. Before her, Karoline Leavitt held the job for more than a year and a half. She announced in August that she was leaving to spend more time with her family, weeks after the birth of her second child.
A friendship of about 25 years
Trump and White have been close for about 25 years. White spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2016, in 2020 and again in 2024, when he introduced Trump. In June, the UFC held its Freedom 250 event on the South Lawn of the White House, one of the main events of the country’s 250th birthday celebrations, and Trump is a regular face at UFC fights.
If the CNN report is right, the offer is already dead, and the search for a press secretary goes on, three weeks after the job fell open. White has said nothing in public either way, and the White House has not announced any appointment.
Reporting note: This story is based on President Trump’s post on Truth Social on Nov. 7, 2026, and on reporting by Reuters, CNN, USA Today and the New York Post. The fighters are listed with the names Trump used in his post. His post names “Kayla Harris”; the UFC fighter is Kayla Harrison.
