The U.F.C. President, Dana White, on Donald Trump: “He’s Not a Racist”

25:16First, Donald has great business instincts. He supports businesses of all sizes. He'll make it possible for them to grow and succeed, which is the backbone of a strong economy. Second, Donald is a hard worker. This guy's going to get up there. He's going to roll up his sleeves. He will work with people and he will put in the time to get things done. Third, for over 15 years, Donald Trump has been a loyal and supportive friend. Well, Dana, tell me a little bit what your politics were like up until then. And what was your sense of his politics up until then? I would say that my politics have always been common sense, down the middle, leaning a little left.

26:06That's what I would say I was. In what sense? um in my 20s i you know my late teens and 20s i spent massachusetts which is very liberal um and uh yeah i would consider myself a a 80s 90s democrat do you have you changed over time politically no i haven't changed you remain a kind of center left democrat yeah i would yeah yeah do you talk politics with trump or did you before the first convention no that wasn't that wasn't a currency of your conversation of your relationship if you look at any of my speeches uh at the conventions or any of that i don't ever say the the left is wrong or the left is bad or the left is this i spoke about who he is as a person and as a friend and as a human being because a lot of the you know the narrative that they put out there about him and who he is as a person is gross.

27:12And absolutely positively not true. Okay. So let's dig into that a little bit. Yeah. I think it's fair to say that if he has that reputation, it doesn't come from outer space. Oh, it does. It comes from politics. That's where it comes from. But doesn't it come from some of his rhetoric and some of his way of treating people and talking about people? No, I think that, listen, you know, did I wish that back in the day he'd stay off Twitter a little bit more and things like, listen, he's a tough guy and, you know, he's not afraid to give his opinion. But he's been talking about politics since he was young.

27:47I mean, if you look back at him, but, you know, these things that he's a racist and he's a Nazi and he's this and that. I mean, Donald Trump, all this stuff's coming out now. You know, the Michael movie just came out and you see all these videos now popping up of Trump defending Michael Jackson and the type of person that he was and that Michael Jackson was around his children and around his family a lot. Wait a minute, Dana. Michael Jackson, as talented as he was, as brilliant as he was, was a deeply, deeply flawed human being. No doubt about it. To say the least and was abusive. Everything we know about him.

28:24Wait a minute. That he was abusive? Kids. Yes. It's terrible. I don't know if that's true. I don't know if that's true, but I can tell you that, you know, the president had a very good relationship with Michael Jackson and had Michael Jackson around his kids all the time and, you know, defended him when that stuff was going down. You ever talk politics with the president? So to call the guy a racist is crazy. He's not a racist. Well, how do you – look, I don't want to go on endlessly about Donald Trump because, you know, then that's all we'll do. but when he puts out a video that shows the obamas as apes and then won't even apologize for it you don't get the willies from that no i i've i've been around the guy so much and but that doesn't give you pause dana as far as what about his views of just about his way he talks about other human beings much less race but if that's the way he if he was that type of a person first of all, I became friends with this guy, never even imagining that he would be the president of the United States someday.

29:29And if he was that type of person, I would never associate with that type of a person, no matter who he was or who he thinks he is. But if he does that, how is he not that kind of person? He's not. Do you know something that I know? What you're telling me is that you kind of know, of course you know him better personally but he's the most transparent personality we have in public life he talks to the press all the time he's on social media all the time it seems sometimes there's nothing that we don't know about him very true so he's almost as as apparent to me as he is to you and i don't i i didn't i don't know about the old obama thing to speak uh you know to speak on i've never seen it.

30:12I didn't know that. But I can tell you this. He's not a racist. He's not a fascist. He loves this country. And if you're an American, race, religion, whatever it is, President Trump is on your team. That I guarantee you. There's another person you have a very close relationship with. In fact, you hired him as an announcer, color commentator, is Joe Rogan. Tell me about him because I listen to him from time to time, I've written about him, but now that he's hugely famous, he's kind of protective of himself and his brand. Tell me about your relationship with him. So when we bought the company, the company was based here in New York.

30:59So I flew from Vegas to New York, got into the office, and I had to start cleaning out the office. and, you know, there were videotapes everywhere. So I had to figure out what was important to send back to Vegas and what I was going to throw away. So I literally watched hundreds of tapes. And one of the tapes that I popped in, the way that Joe spoke about the UFC and how fighters in the UFC would match up against some of these Hollywood action stars, I was like, this guy's great. This is exactly who I need. because his talent is what what's so his talent is he's a martial artist right black belt and jiu-jitsu so so the the hardest part in in selling this thing the fertittas and i knew everybody understands the stand-up punching and kicking everybody gets but as soon as it hits the ground people have no idea what's going on what do you mean as far as setting up submissions like you said the sleeper hold so it's more it's more hidden and more complicated yeah yeah the technical side of the ground game.

32:02Joe was brilliant and he's a really good speaker. So he could walk you through what was happening seconds before it even happened. And he was great at speaking publicly about the UFC. UFC commentator and all-around personality, Joe Rogan. Joe, let me start with you. Will mixed martial arts peak and fall like kickboxing or will it become a permanent part of the sports culture? Well, I certainly think it's a permanent part of the sports culture. It's a much more exciting sport than any of the other combat sports that are out there right now. And that's why it's here. And that's why it's the fastest growing sport in the world.

32:39So when we first bought the company, I flew all over the country meeting with editors of newspapers. Cause remember newspapers were the King then. So all these guys were 60 to 65 years old that I was talking to. All they cared about was ball and stick sports and sometimes boxing. You know what I mean? And the truth of the matter was there was no room for UFC in the papers. So I had to buy my way onto radio. Radio was still very relevant then. So we would do these satellite radio tours. And what we learned is fighters are not good radio. All right. They'd show up late. They'd still sound like they were sleeping.

33:26There was nothing exciting. So me and Joe Rogan had to do all these radio tours. Now we're on the West coast. We had to wake up at three o 'clock in the morning because they're going to drop us into the East coast at six o 'clock drive time. So then we'd go East Coast, Midwest, and then the tour would end on the West Coast. Our start all started on radio. So he went, he'd worked for you for quite a while, and then he obviously has his podcast, which is gigantic. My understanding is that you were instrumental in getting him to endorse Donald Trump this last time around. Tell me that story. Yeah.

34:07So I tried to connect him and Trump, you know, for like probably six years. Was Rogan wary of Trump in some way? Why? Rogan, well, Rogan didn't want to be political. He did not want to get into politics. He did not want to be political. And his thing was all, but then he had Bernie Sanders on. That's right. He was kind of pro Bernie Sanders. Very. And, you know, and even when I talked to him about Trump going on the podcast, he says, Well, okay, well, I'm going to invite Kamala too. Cool. Get it. Love it. And early on, I started telling the president, if you stay on Fox and only Fox, you're going to lose.

34:51Because most of the people on Fox are already voting for you and every other network says horrible things about you. You got to start getting into podcasts. And who is he going to reach when he goes on Joe Rogan, in your view? Well, it wasn't just Joe Rogan. It was other podcasters, which I, uh, he was picking me up in Las Vegas and we were flying to, uh, Arizona for a rally. And there's a group called the Nelk boys that I had created a relationship with. They're young kids that do pranks and they're YouTubers, influencers. And I called Jared Kushner and I said, I want to bring this group of kids, the Nelk boys on Air Force One with us to Arizona.

35:37And Jared Kushner says, well, you're asking him that. I'm not. And so I called him and he said, yeah, let's do it. We get in there and these guys are all excited because they're Trump fans and, you know, they're kids. So they're, you know, at one point he looks like at me and he's like, are you kidding me right now? Are you serious? And we're all in there taking pictures. To his brilliance, we go to the rally. He does the rally and he's leaving the stage. and the YMCA thing's playing. And he sees one of the kids whose name is Steve Will Do It. And he's going crazy. The president calls him up on stage with him.

36:12And the whole crowd erupts. And they start doing the YMCA thing. It was the most viral thing on the internet that day. And then he got it. The power of these kids that most people don't know. Right. You know, the media is all starting to get into it now, which the - Right, it's not 60 minutes. It's not the mainstream newspapers. By the time the media catches up, it's over. So we then we got him on their podcast. And the podcast did something like 8 million views in four hours. He got it. If I understand you called Rogan as the campaign between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump was winding down, you called Rogan, I think.

36:55And you said, are you going to endorse or not? What happened? Yes. Tell me about that conversation. I was flying to Mar-a-Lago, me and Frank Fertitta, for election night. And he had done the podcast and the podcast was blowing up, pulling huge numbers. And I text him and said, are you voting for Trump? And he said, yes. I said, then endorse. Why have you not endorsed him? What did he say? He said, I'm just busy. I'm this, I'm that. I'm busy. Yeah. He said, I'm busy? Yeah. Please. So what happened? He endorsed. You think, so that was you. It's on you. Is it on me? But you gave him the extra shove.

37:37Yeah, well, I had been working on him for a few years. So now, these days, I'm sure you've noticed, he's pretty critical of Trump. Now, he was thrilled to see them endorse hallucinogens and Ibogaine, Ibogaine. But he's been very tough on him on a number of issues, including ICE, the war in Iran. do you agree with rogan on this i think that anybody who is the president of the united states you're never going to agree with a hundred percent of what they do but what do you disagree with with donald trump me and donald trump are friends i get so you have this you're saying i don't have a transactional relationship i get that but you don't want to express any disagreement be honest with me between no it's no i i i it's not that i just told you before i wish i could take his Twitter away, you know, sometimes in the past, I, I, I know who this guy is.

38:34And, uh, do you agree with them on Iran? But we, um, I don't know. I mean, I mean, I'm not a political guy. I'm not a political guy. You're on the, speaking at the conventions, you're at the, you know, triumphant victory party. And what did I say? What did I say when I was at those? No, they were congratulatory. They were personal for sure. They weren't policy oriented speeches. They were absolutely personal speeches. They weren't political in any way, shape, or form. It would be disloyal, you're saying? What would be? To criticize him in any way. No, no, no. Not to criticize him. And I'm not saying that I agree with all his policies.

39:12But you want to keep that general, not specific, is what you're saying. Me? Personally? Yeah. You know what I do? I can control my little world that I live in, in my bubble, my employees, my fighters, my family, and my friends. You're about to have an extraordinary event in Washington. You're going to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence with a UFC fight event on the White House lawn. And I've heard the weigh-ins may take place at the Lincoln Memorial. Is that true? Tell me about that event, its origins, and what you hope to do. Yeah. So we were at a fight, and I can't remember if it was in New Jersey or Miami, we being me and the president.

39:54And he leans over to me in the middle of the fight and goes, we should do a fight at the White House. I said, yes, yes, we should. I'm in. I'm in. And he's like, I think it would be great to have an event, you know, for America's 250th. And so literally that was a Saturday. On Monday, the White House started calling and saying, let's start getting the logistics. And you're in charge. Shut up and yeah. How's it going to work? Who are you going to have fight? So every fight actually means something and matters in the division. Two world titles on the line. And stylistically, it should be a great fight.

40:33What's it going to look like? I've seen sketches. Yeah. It looks like a fight in outer space with the White House there. So here's what happened. And the reason that it looks like that is I don't want to see a light, a screen, a microphone. all I want to see is the White House, the entire White House, and the monument if the fight goes the other way. So we had to build this thing that we are calling the claw. It is the lighting grid. And how many people are going to be in the stands around it? So there will be a little over 4 ,000. The president has 1 ,000 tickets. I have 200 tickets, and Ari Emanuel has 200 tickets.

41:11And the rest are going to all the different branches of the military of the 4 ,000 people that will be there. And then in the Ellipse, which is a park right across the street from the White House, there'll be 85 ,000 people. So how are you going to broadcast this? So we just signed a new seven-year deal with Paramount Plus, and all of our content is there. Do you notice people on the other side of the aisle, Democrats, liberals, trying to show up at UFC fights, befriend you, or are you concerned that you have a kind of partisan image? No, we We haven't had anybody, but. Why do you suppose that is?

41:46I would never disrespect or turn anybody away. I get that. I get that. But it's interesting to see them show up at Joe Rogan's microphone and they might go to a baseball game or a World Series, you know, might go to a World Series game or an NBA playoff game. But they're keeping their distance from UFC. Yeah, I don't think they're keeping their distance. I think that the difference with President Trump is he was a day one fan. I mean, this guy's been a fan since day one. Gave us that opportunity to come to the Taj Mahal. And you saw it with Obama. Obama's a fan of the NBA. So he showed up at NBA games and— Not UFC.

42:22Yeah, and— Has Obama been to UFC? Bush too. I mean, Bush is a baseball fan. No, I know, but has Obama ever showed up at a UFC fight? I'm just curious. No. No, but at the inauguration, I was sitting behind all the ex-presidents. I saw that. Yeah. And there was some things that went out online that said, oh, look at Dana Mad Dog and Obama and all this other stuff. President Obama turned around and said to me, congratulations on all your success. I'm really happy for you. And I said, thank you, Mr. President. That must have made you feel good. Yeah, it was great. Yeah.

43:04UFC President and CEO Dana White. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around.

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46:00I'm David Remnick. We'll return to my conversation now with UFC president Dana White. He made headlines recently for attending a different kind of DC event. He was at the White House Correspondents' Dinner where a would-be shooter was taken down by Secret Service. And White's reaction to it all was unusual. And they were screaming, get down. I didn't get down. It was f***ing awesome. I literally took every minute of it in, and it was a pretty crazy, unique experience. Here's the rest of my conversation with Dana White. You were just at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, and you were quoted as saying, and I don't want to take this out of context, but I'll let you tell the story.

46:45You said it was awesome. That could have been, it was pretty horrible. What did you mean by it was awesome? So I was sitting there talking to Pete Hegseth. The Secretary of Defense. Yes. Or war, depending on your... Yes. And, you know, we were talking about all this fascinating stuff and all of a sudden... Well, you can't go that fast. What was the fascinating stuff you were talking about? Iran and, you know, and what's going on over there. What was he telling you? I'll leave that alone. I make a living at this. I understand, sir. I understand. All of a sudden, you start hearing just crashing, like plates and dishes and glasses.

47:26And turn around, and what looked like 50 Secret Service guys kicking tables over, running on the top of tables, and they're screaming, everybody get on the ground. And I was like, oh my God. Then I watched them pull Vance and Trump off the stage. They clear the stage and then literally the entire stage are guys with guns, with lights on them pointed at us. Now, the Secret Service guys are coming toward our table. I was the first table in front of the stage and we don't know what's going on. Is there a shooter? Is there a bomb? and just the adrenaline in your body, and mine anyway, was off the charts.

48:13I mean, it was, they're saying get down, get down. First of all, I'm never a get down kind of guy, okay? That's never going to happen. If there's something going on here, I got a bad news for my family. It's going to be a closed casket, okay? Because I'm not getting shot in the back laying on the ground. And these guys came in and how fast they moved through this place. It was just, now being another man, tell me the greatest movie you ever saw with that, with those type, just on steroids. I mean, it was, it was now. Dana, it wasn't a movie. I know. Which made it even greater. And when it was over, I was like, for four hours, I was bouncing off the walls.

48:59I was just, and. What did Hexeth do? The fact that. Hexeth they dragged off? Let me tell you what Hexeth didn't do. He didn't get on the ground either. He was sitting right next to me, and then his wife was with him, and then he ended up taking his wife out of there. But you stayed. Oh, yeah. Well, I had to stay. Nobody was dragging you off. Yeah, nobody dragged me off. We had to stay in there. And I'll tell you this, too. So you had the who's who from politics, the who's who from the media, and the who's who in business in this room. and lots of far left liberal media, which were a lot of women.

49:38None of these women were screaming. None of these women were getting, you know, overly excited about this thing. And then when it was over and we knew that the threat was over, you know, everybody just started getting together and talking. It was pretty badass and pretty impressive. You weren't scared at all? Never. Not even for Trump's sake or? No, they had the— You thought that was under control. They had them out of there pretty quick. Yeah. And— What did you think Trump was going to say that night about the press? Well, he tried to come back. He wanted to finish it. He wanted to do, you know, the event, and Secret Service wouldn't let him.

50:18You know, I'm sure there were a lot of far-left women in there that probably don't like me or, you know, or think that I—you know. What counts for far-left for you? What do you mean? You know, in the medias. CNN, we all got together after that, and everybody was talking, and there's just this level of camaraderie and just that, holy shit, what we just went through kind of thing. and uh you know the fact that you could experience something like that and nobody got hurt but to be in it and see it play out like you would see in a movie but actually experience it was hopefully a one-of-one but an incredible experience have you talked to president trump since then i was with him last night i had dinner with him last night and had that dinner go what you're talking about it's great uh well there were other people at the he opened the rose garden last night and he had his first dinner out there.

51:17I flew in and had dinner with him and then flew here. What do you talk about? You know, he and I just talk about anything that you would normally talk to your friend about. What's new? How's the family? Movies? How you been? He looked great. He looks like he's in good shape right now. So you don't buy the business of, you know, he's around 80 and it's not easy being president. It's not easy being 80. And then his health is lousy. You don't see that. But his health is far from lousy. Tell me about that. Far from lousy. And this isn't the Biden, you know, buddies of his backing him up saying he's whatever.

51:51He looks like he's in better shape than the last time I saw him. And, you know, he was on point last night. Do you worry about his presidency? His popularity is at a record low, a record low for other presidents too. Where do you think he is at this point? You know, I think that he's got three more years left. And again. And two and a half, but it was counting. You judge him when it's over, when his run is over and he moves on and you look back at what he accomplished and what he's done. You know, I think there's a lot of things that he's obviously never going to get credit for because, you know, if you don't like him, you don't like him.

52:29But what do you give him credit for as president? Securing our borders. I mean, how do you not give him credit for that? The Middle East. Look at the work he did in the Middle East during his first term. You're referring to the Abraham, of course. Yeah, of course. And now? Yeah. I mean, the Middle East is a tricky place to navigate. And I think he does a better job than most. I get the sense, Dana, that to some degree, you'll be glad not to have to answer questions about Donald Trump when he's out of office. No, I think... You want to be a loyal friend. No, no, no. And when it comes to the specifics of his politics, you'd rather...

53:05I get it. No. Am I wrong? No, not at all. Go ahead. People can ask me about Donald Trump for the rest of my life. And I'll tell you all the great things that I love about this guy. What I'll be happy to be out of is politics. Yeah, I don't want to talk about politics. Whether they're his, Obama's, this guy, that guy, none of them. Now, you made a huge deal with the UFC. A huge deal. How much did you come away with? $7.7 billion. You, personally? Oh, no, no, no, no. The company, yeah. And how about you? Yeah, I do really well. I do really well. Are you a billionaire now? No. No. You're close. And you recently— I spend too much money.

53:48I'll never be a billionaire. It's really funny. But I've watched you play poker on television and other games of chance. And the bets on the table are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and sometimes on a single bet over a million bucks if they'll take the bet. Right. Are you out of your mind? Yes. You're married, right? Yes. How does your wife feel about these bets? Yeah, you know, my wife's doing okay, too. You know, we don't have a lot to complain about. No, but you know that in the end, the house wins, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And in the end, you only live once. I just went to the Kentucky Derby for the first time with my wife and kids.

54:24Did you put down a bet? I did, yeah. How'd you do? I didn't do well. I didn't do. I don't sports bet. How much did you put down? I put down$70 ,000. Now, how big is gambling in your line of business with UFC? It's big, yeah. I mean, betting on fights, sports betting period is massive right now. I do not sports bet, though. But how do you ensure, how do you keep it clean? How do you keep it on the up and up? Yeah, we've had those problems, not with the mob or any of that kind of stuff, but we've had a couple of betting issues, yeah. But we have a company called U.S. Integrity that watches this type of stuff.

54:59That's a private company. They let us know whenever. The state doesn't get involved? No. So we had an issue where we saw some irregular betting going on, and we call the FBI. That's what we do. Tell me the story. What does irregular betting mean in this context? It means when you have a fight that isn't like the main event and the line starts to move a lot. But that's the indicator in fighting, that the line moves, so there's the suspicion that somebody's about to throw a fight. 100%. There's something fishy going on when an undercard fight and a line starts moving. Particularly the undercard, not the headliners.

55:37Yeah, because the headliners are very high profile and lots of people are betting on it. And, you know, it can happen there too, but it's a lot more noticeable when it happens on a prelim fight. You're also in the boxing business. You've just recently launched a new boxing company called Zufa. Zufa, by the way. To fight in Italian. Oh, okay. Yeah. Um, my impression has been that with some exceptions in recent years, boxing is not, certainly not what it was in the fifties and sixties and seventies and eighties or nineties. Is boxing declining? And if so, why are you getting into it? Yeah. I, I, I think that boxing has been broken for a long time for a lot of different reasons and I love the sport and I've always talked about jumping in and, and trying to sort of, uh, put my spin on boxing and try to see what I could do with it.

56:32And everything in life is about timing, and the timing just worked out in the last year. And so far, so good. I'm having fun with it. What I want to do is try to rip it apart, build it from the ground up, and see what I can do with it over the next five years. Got it. All right. I hope you come back. This was fun. I'd love to. Thanks for having me. Dana White, the president and CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. I'm David Remnick. Thanks for listening. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Louis Mitchell.

57:18This episode was produced by Max Bolton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Mike Kutchman, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Sommer. With guidance from Emily Botin. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherena Endowment Fund.

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