On Saturday the president announced, by Truth Social, that Dana White “has been offered the job of Press Secretary of the United States,” that “Dana will be a Press Secretary like none other,” and, in a closing line that suggested the two men had not yet discussed it, “Dana, please take the job!” White posted a picture of himself at the briefing room podium captioned “On to the next chapter,” and CNN reported hours later that he intends to decline. He meets the president Monday. Before that meeting, this publication has undertaken the review nobody at the White House appears to have: is he qualified?
We approached it the way a hiring committee would, through the candidate’s body of work. Dana White has conducted, by our rough count, somewhere north of a thousand press conferences over twenty-five years as the head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which is more than every White House press secretary in history combined. The sample is large. The findings follow.
He is experienced at the podium. White’s press conferences follow a fixed format. He stands at a lectern bearing the logo of a company he runs. He announces events that have not yet been finalized, in a tone that makes clear they will be. He takes questions. When he does not care for a question he tells the reporter it is stupid, sometimes with an adjective in front of “stupid,” and moves on to a reporter he likes. He has barred reporters from the room for coverage he disliked, most famously the MMA journalist Ariel Helwani, who was told in 2016 that he was banned for life and was un-banned within days after the rest of the press corps objected. The current White House has barred the Associated Press from the Oval Office since February 2025 over the name of a body of water, so the lifetime ban followed by partial reversal is already the house style. He would be adapting nothing.
He promotes a product he owns. A press secretary’s job, in theory, is to represent the government to the public. In practice the job under this administration has been to represent the president to the public, and White has twenty-five years of representing his own company to the public with the specific, total confidence of a man who has never once been asked to present the other side. He sits on the board of Meta. He introduced the president at three Republican conventions, including the 2024 speech where he described a man who had been shot the week before as “the toughest, most resilient human being” he had met. He produced a cage fight on the South Lawn for the president’s eightieth birthday. The previous occupant of the job had to learn to speak as though the president’s interests and the country’s were the same thing. White has never spoken any other way.
He has survived a scandal with no consequences. On New Year’s Eve 2022 White was filmed in a Cabo nightclub slapping his wife, said afterward “there’s no excuse,” and announced that his punishment would be the public knowing about it. The UFC’s parent company took no action and he remains in charge. For a position whose previous occupant lasted five days before being removed without explanation, the ability to remain in a job after a documented public incident is a core competency, and he is the only candidate who has demonstrated it.
He can announce things that aren’t true yet. White is famous in his industry for declaring fights signed before the fighters have agreed, venues booked before the contracts exist, and a “Fight Island” that turned out to be a hotel in Abu Dhabi. Every one was said with conviction and most eventually became true, which is the skill the briefing room has required since January 2025. The difference is that White’s announcements usually do come true, which would be an upgrade.
He is, however, saying no. Here the review hits its one obstacle. CNN’s sourcing has White declining, and his Instagram caption was read by one outlet as a joke. A press secretary who turns down the president on his first day has created a problem for the president rather than for himself, so we don’t count it against him. We note only that if he does decline, he will have done so after the offer was public, which is a thing the current cabinet has not managed once.
A complication: which Dana White? A theory circulated over the weekend that the president, or someone handing him a name, meant Dana W. White, the former Pentagon chief spokeswoman who held the Defense Department briefing room from 2017 until she left in 2018. She is an experienced government communicator with a security clearance and a résumé the job actually calls for, which is why the theory is almost certainly wrong. The post calls the candidate “a violent Fighter and Warrior,” which narrows it. We considered the question of which Dana White would wear the suit better and declined to rule, on the grounds that the president’s post didn’t mention a suit.
Finding. By the standards the office itself has established, Dana White is the most qualified candidate for White House press secretary in the history of the position. He has more podium hours than anyone who has held it. He has banned reporters and un-banned them. He has announced things before they happened and promoted a product he owns to a room full of people paid to be skeptical of it, for a quarter century, without once appearing to notice the room. The job has been vacant since October 16, when the last holder was removed after five days, and before that by a woman who left in August to spend time with her family. The bar is where it is.
The only argument against him is that he knows all this and is still saying no, which suggests a judgment about the job that no previous applicant has shown, and which, under the hiring committee’s own rules, is the single disqualifying factor. Monday will tell.
Does it matter? WILL it matter?
You can't be serious. Stop insulting our intelligence.