UPDATED: Donald Trump says he has offered the job of White House press secretary to UFC President and CEO Dana White, “a violent Fighter and Warrior,” in the president’s words.
It was not immediately clear whether Trump was joking, trolling, both or neither.
If White accepts the gig, he would fill the vacancy left when the woefully unprepared Katie Zacharia was fired last month after just five days on the job. Zacharia, a conservative commentator who misrepresented herself as a lawyer – she’d never taken the bar – delivered only one press briefing, a performance so dismal she was booted before she could handle another.
“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 today. “I have requested that he bring with him assistants, even though some are not from our Country, of Islam Makhachev, Khabib Nurmagomedov, Justin Gaethje, Daniel Cormier, Amanda Nunes, and Kayla Harris. We need these people to defend us against the Lunatic Left. Dana will be a Press Secretary like none other. Dana, please take the job!”
Watch on Deadline
All of the names mentioned as assistants are or were UFC fighters.
CNN reported that White declined the job. He told reporters at a UFC press conference in London that he has a meeting with Trump on Monday. “I got a lot of jobs already,” he said.
Trump recently joked that putting Nikki Minaj in the press secretary role would be “a good idea,” a sign that the president is not above using the job opening to troll Democrats and the press. That said, just yesterday he appointed Stephen Miller, the architect for many of the most divisive policies that contributed to the Republican Party’s devastating mid-term loss to Democrats, to the position of White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy.
White and Trump are old friends, and the UFC CEO hosted and organized the mixed martial arts cage fight staged on the White Houe lawn for the president’s 80th birthday.