UFC CEO Dana White, who backed President-elect Donald Trump throughout his campaign, said the 2024 election was likely the last time he will ever wade into the world of politics.
“I want nothing to do with this s–t,” White, 55, told The New Yorker at Saturday’s UFC 309 at Madison Square Garden. “It’s gross. It’s disgusting. I want nothing to do with politics.”
White, whose friendship with Trump goes back decades, was instrumental in helping the president-elect reach young male voters.
The headline fight was between two heavyweight champions, Jon Jones and Stipe Miocic, but much of the audience had come to see the President-elect, who had suggested, during an appearance on [Joe] Rogan’s podcast in October, that he would be in attendance. (“I’ll either go as President, or I’ll be depressed and I won’t bother going,” he said.) “We heard Donnie Trump was coming through and couldn’t miss that,” a twenty-four-year-old man named Robert, from suburban New Jersey, told me. His friend Keith added, “It just makes it seem like he wants to be part of what all the regular people do.” A twenty-year-old fan named Tiny Boadu, who wore a MAGA hat and a Trump shirt, similarly described Trump as a “person of the people.” Boadu said that Trump’s love of U.F.C. was a major part of his appeal. “Presidents don’t usually come out to events like this,” he told me. […]
When Trump launched his first Presidential campaign, in 2015, White was one of the first public figures to endorse him. And during and after his first term, Trump was able to look to the U.F.C. as a sort of safe space. In October, 2019, Trump was roundly booed at a World Series game in Washington, D.C. The next week, he went to a U.F.C. event at M.S.G. “Every time when he was getting hammered at his worst, we’d walk into that arena and the place erupts and goes crazy,” White told me. “It shows other people, Oh, wait. Everybody doesn’t hate Donald Trump like the media is telling us.” […]
During Trump’s 2024 campaign, White played a pivotal role in brokering relationships between Trump and certain hosts among the canon of “bro-casts”: Lewan and his co-host, Will Compton, Theo Von, Adin Ross, Andrew Schulz, the Nelk Boys, and, of course, Rogan. White explained that the goal was to mobilize members of the younger generation that typically don’t vote. Young men, one of the most unreliable demographics in politics, make up a large part of U.F.C.’s audience. “You’re getting conversations in these podcasts, and you yourself, as a young kid, get to really see who Donald Trump is,” White explained. “Not the bullshit you hear from the far-left media.” During Trump’s victory speech, he invited White onstage, and White specifically thanked Von, Ross, the Nelk Boys, and other podcasters for their help. (The New Yorker)
Now that his friend is heading back to Washington, White's done.
“I’m never f***ing doing this again,” he said.
