Donald Trump posted on Saturday that Dana White had been offered the job of Press Secretary of the United States, then later said he was only kidding. The abrupt turn briefly made one of the strangest staffing ideas in recent White House memory look real before Trump walked it back himself.
White, who has spent years building a public life far outside government, was not talking like a man already in the job. He told reporters, “I'm flying to Washington, D.C. right now,” said he planned to meet Trump on Monday and added, “I got a lot of jobs already.” That left the search for the Dana White Press Secretary story centered on a simple question: was this a real offer, or a political joke delivered online?
Trump’s post left little room for ambiguity at first. He wrote that he was pleased to announce that “the Great Dana White” had been offered the role and said White would be “a Press Secretary like none other.” He also said he had asked White to bring assistants from Islam Makhachev, Khabib Nurmagomedov, Justin Gaethje, Daniel Cormier, Amanda Nunes and Kayla Harris, a line that made the post read less like a routine personnel notice than a boast meant to provoke attention.
But the sequence did not hold. A White House source told a network that White had turned down the offer, while an aide to Trump said the president was only joking when he floated it. Later, Trump said, “I will tell you; I was only kidding, but Dana loves the idea, and there's only one Dana; he's great,” and then added, “I was kidding, of course.” Those comments resolved the immediate uncertainty: the post was real, the proposal was not meant seriously, and White was not stepping into the press secretary role.
The episode landed because the office was already open after White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia was fired after only five days on the job. It also fit a pattern in which Trump turns close allies into public characters in his orbit. Trump and White have been friends for years, Trump has attended UFC matches for years, and this summer he hosted a UFC event on the lawn of the White House as part of the celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the United States. Before White was even mentioned, Trump administration officials had floated Nicki Minaj for the same role, and Trump had also shared an AI-generated Family Guy-style animated video of White as press secretary.
For now, White is headed to Washington, D.C. and Trump has already said he was joking. That leaves the only durable fact from Saturday as the one White himself supplied: he already has plenty of jobs, and the White House press secretary role is not one of them.
