EGN NEWS DESK
Dana White’s diplomatic ambitions had been clear, if difficult: Un-cancel Bud Light.
He had some calls to make.
As the chief government of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, Mr. White was the arena-filling, Trump-loving, perpetually smirking public face of a multi-billion-dollar sport.
But in finishing a reported nine-figure deal final fall to make Bud Light the U.F.C.’s official beer sponsor, Mr. White all of a sudden stood accused of promoting out: Much of the political proper — and, not by the way, a lot of the U.F.C.’s viewers — had been pulverizing Bud Light for months over a promotion that includes a transgender influencer. The model, which first labored with the U.F.C. greater than 15 years earlier, was plainly hoping {that a} renewed affiliation would possibly assist its trigger.
Publicly, Mr. White appealed to mates throughout the conservative media, defending Bud Light’s dad or mum firm in interviews with Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk. “The undeniable fact that Anheuser-Busch needs to be in enterprise with me?” Mr. White mentioned, arguing that this alone demonstrated the success of the backlash.
Privately, Mr. White introduced the profitable sponsorship as a matter of precept (“We don’t cancel folks,” he advised one confidant) and helped hasten a détente. During a struggle night time at Madison Square Garden final November, Kid Rock — who had been savaging Bud Light — had “an amazing dialog” with Anheuser-Busch’s chief government in Mr. White’s inexperienced room, the musician later mentioned. The boycott was quickly off.
When a ultimate holdout, former President Donald J. Trump, continued hammering the corporate in February, Mr. White spoke to him by telephone, in keeping with folks briefed on the dialog, and Mr. Trump was sheepish about inflicting any complications. Within days, Mr. Trump steered on social media that Anheuser-Busch deserved “a second likelihood,” ticking by speaking factors that sounded suspiciously like Mr. White’s.
Weeks later, earlier than a sellout crowd in Miami, the 2 walked out collectively to rapturous applause, taking their seats cage-side to look at Mr. White’s fighters bleed and rumble throughout the canvas’s unmissable Bud Light emblem.
In a cultural period stocked with blusterers, wheeler-dealers and ideologically pliable political gamers, maybe nobody (with the potential exception of Mr. Trump) has been extra ostentatiously efficient at anticipating this American second and harnessing it towards his ends.
Perched on the intersection of sports activities, enterprise and the perpetually tradition wars — whereas insisting, unpersuasively, that his is the uncommon sport unconcerned with such politics — Mr. White, 54, has steered his as soon as teetering cage-fighting enterprise to the carnivorous coronary heart of the nationwide mainstream.
He dines with Emirati royals and takes conferences beside a saber-toothed tiger cranium in his Las Vegas workplace. He salutes and antagonizes the skilled destroyers in his work power, relying on the day.
He is the P.T. Barnum of individuals choking one another into submission, if P.T. Barnum additionally hawked a line of canned whiskey and cola and wager $100,000 per blackjack hand.
“He was born within the excellent time,” Mike Tyson, an in depth buddy, mentioned in an interview.
Yet past any feat of commerce in constructing his fight sport into a worldwide juggernaut, Mr. White has emerged as a significant ally to the previous (and possibly future) president, rigorously tending a mutually invaluable friendship that stretches greater than 20 years.
From the early 2000s, when Mr. Trump’s imprimatur helped buttress a down-and-out U.F.C., by his White House tenure as “Combatant in Chief” (because the U.F.C. has hailed him), the 2 males have labored to enshrine blended martial arts because the MAGA motion’s semiofficial sport.
In an announcement offered by his marketing campaign, Mr. Trump referred to as Mr. White “a particular individual and an incredible businessman,” praising the U.F.C. and the “loyal buddy” who leads it.
Like Don King and Vince McMahon earlier than him, Mr. White has grow to be Mr. Trump’s conduit to trendy struggle followers, whose demographics observe neatly with an important chunk of the reworked Republican base: younger, male, not steeped in again problems with National Review.
“BLUE COLLAR PATRIOT,” learn one fan’s shirt in Miami, in a piece close to the cage, amid a smattering of “Make America Great Again” hats and a small armada of Trump-blessed, eternally streaming media celebrities — Dave Portnoy, Dan Bongino, Candace Owens, Benny Johnson — desirous to fete Mr. White and the previous president upon arrival.
A couple of ft away, Joe Rogan, the podcasting colossus beloved by many Trump supporters, was reprising his longtime night time gig because the U.F.C.’s struggle commentator.
More than something, the U.F.C. has equipped Mr. Trump with a constant secure harbor since he left workplace, buoying him by his political nadir after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and his gusher of authorized issues.
Mr. Trump’s first main sporting occasion as a twice-impeached, quasi-radioactive civilian in 2021 was a U.F.C. struggle card. After Mr. Trump’s indictment in Manhattan final 12 months, he turned up days later at one other U.F.C. occasion, to chants of “U.S.A.!”
Rarely an brisk campaigner in his 2024 Republican major, Mr. Trump may accrue the advantages of a correct rally — together with fawning protection from favored retailers — just by attending fights.
“Donald Trump Sends UFC 296 Crowd Into an Utter Frenzy After Making His Entrance Like a Complete Boss,” The Daily Caller enthused in December.
“His base is Trump’s base,” Kellyanne Conway, Mr. Trump’s former White House counselor, mentioned of Mr. White. “And Trump’s base is his base.”
If Mr. White and Mr. Trump see a few of themselves in one another regardless of their disparate beginnings — Mr. White is a former Boston resort bellman and not using a faculty diploma — that is affordable sufficient.
Mr. White, too, speaks with “consider me” bravado in regards to the methods of the world: winners and losers, wusses and “killers.”
He loves a digicam and hates the information media — or at the least makes a present of his disdain — giving followers ample content material for YouTube sizzle reels of Mr. White dismissing critics, reporters, Covid. (Mr. White, by the U.F.C., declined to be interviewed.)
He has survived scandals that may have felled most contemporaries, struggling little consequence final 12 months after he was videotaped slapping his spouse at a nightclub.
He takes an extended view of publicity (“You should embrace the negativity, too,” Mr. White has mentioned) however dwells greater than sometimes on those that have underestimated him.
“Bet towards me,” he’s fond of claiming.
Such is the creed of the rampaging optimist.
“He’s America, man,” mentioned Ari Emanuel, the chief government of Endeavor, a key enterprise associate since a $4 billion acquisition in 2016 that left Mr. White in cost.
At minimal, those that know Mr. White say, he appears to know his instances.
In interviews with allies, associates and rivals by the a long time, many had been quickest to flag his abiding pre-Trump foresight about the place his life, and everybody’s, gave the impression to be headed.
Did he fill a necessity or create one? Did he anticipate America circa 2024 — the collective abdomen for a sure sort of ugly spectacle, the interval of nationwide fight past the cage — or did he assist make it so?
The solutions are sure, mates say, and Mr. White’s rationalization is straightforward.
“America has grow to be so delicate,” he advised an interviewer final 12 months, pinching his fingers collectively. “If you even have this a lot savage in you, every little thing on the market proper now could be for the taking.”
An Influential Early Backer
Mixed martial arts combines facets of kickboxing, wrestling, jujitsu and different disciplines right into a bone-busting medley of organized brawling.
Early value determinations described it in a different way.
“Human cockfighting,” Senator John McCain mentioned in 1996, three years after the U.F.C. was based.
“There Are No Rules,” learn one firm tagline that appeared to virtually taunt athletic regulators and alienate informal followers.
Many venues refused to carry fights. But one was undeterred: the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City.
“Nobody took us critically,” Mr. White has mentioned. “Except Donald Trump.”
Even earlier than Mr. White grew to become the U.F.C.’s president, Mr. Trump hosted fights with out obvious hesitation. An inveterate fight sports activities fan perpetually searching for a ringside seat, he may lend the proceedings a sure tabloid credibility. (He would years later invite Tito Ortiz, one of many U.F.C.’s early stars, onto the primary season of “The Celebrity Apprentice.”)
To today, Mr. Trump speaks with excessive fluency in regards to the historical past and intricacies of the U.F.C. “It’s type of a microcosm of life,” Mr. Trump mentioned on a U.F.C. podcast final 12 months, edging about as shut as he will get to contemplative.
For Mr. White, a Taj Mahal struggle night time in February 2001 was the primary for the U.F.C. beneath his course and the end result of a imaginative and prescient that even mates had thought-about harebrained.
A serial scofflaw, by his personal account, bouncing between Las Vegas and the Northeast in his youth, Mr. White had skilled to be a boxer earlier than concluding that he was not skilled materials. He labored as a boxercise teacher round Boston, hauling a hockey bag full of kit from session to session by mountain bike and imagining extra.
“He was all the time speaking in regards to the large time: ‘There’s so many alternatives out west, out west, out west,’” mentioned Peter Welch, a Boston boxing fixture with whom he labored.
Mr. White has mentioned he fled Boston within the mid-Nineties for a difficult-to-confirm purpose: that associates of the crime boss James (Whitey) Bulger got here to demand cash he didn’t have. He settled again in Las Vegas, continued coaching boxers and made himself ubiquitous in native struggle circles. He grew to become a manager for Mr. Ortiz and Chuck Liddell, one other U.F.C. contender.
When Mr. White realized that the U.F.C.’s earlier homeowners had been trying to promote, he persuaded two high-school mates, the on line casino operators Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, to purchase it for $2 million. They made Mr. White president and gave him a ten % stake. None of this appeared particularly clever on the time.
“We purchased an organization that wasn’t allowed on pay-per-view,” Mr. White mentioned in 2013. “Porn is on pay-per-view.”
After the acquisition, Mr. White moved shortly to revamp the U.F.C.’s stay manufacturing values, pumping in pyrotechnics and metal-band music cues.
The purpose, Mr. White steered, was to persuade audiences of the U.F.C.’s magnitude by sheer power of pageantry — “the Super Bowl of blended martial arts,” he mentioned on his first broadcast as president, wanting little like his future self, with a close-cropped haircut and a tie.
It didn’t take, at the least initially. Despite Mr. Trump’s endorsement and the game’s efforts to impose (somewhat) extra order on the struggle guidelines, Mr. White has mentioned the U.F.C. was tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} within the gap.
Its path out was one other gamble: a weekly-elimination actuality present, “The Ultimate Fighter,” that the Fertittas supplied to supply themselves if Spike TV, a channel full of testosterone-forward programming, would conform to air it.
The sequence, USA Today wrote in 2005, solid Mr. White in “the Donald Trump position,” making him a minor Las Vegas celeb.
That it grew to become successful, dragging the U.F.C. together with it, was without delay a validation of Mr. White’s perception within the sport’s potential — the athleticism and tenacity required, the worldwide solid of compelling characters — and a testomony to his personal relentlessness.
Mr. White has mentioned he instituted a blanket private coverage towards attending weddings (“weddings take time”) and as soon as rescheduled his spouse’s C-section to keep away from the date of a serious struggle card.
“If there have been 400 days within the 12 months and 38 hours in a day,” mentioned Brian Diamond, a former Spike TV government, “he would work each single second on U.F.C.”
Former fighters have mentioned Mr. White’s work didn’t all the time prioritize their pursuits. He has been trailed for years by accusations that the U.F.C. underpays its fighters, particularly given the game’s bodily toll. (The U.F.C.’s dad or mum firm lately agreed to pay $335 million to settle class motion lawsuits introduced by fighters who accused the U.F.C. of abusing its dominant market place.)
Michael Thomsen, the creator of “Cage Kings,” a 2023 historical past of the U.F.C., described Mr. White principally as a single-minded government who “actually simply needs issues to work.”
“That may be harmful,” he added, “when the factor you wish to work is a formulation of exploitations and wage suppression and minimizing long-term well being penalties.”
Defenders say Mr. White’s is a star-driven enterprise, the place winners make extra by bonuses and endorsements.
Those on the high see the logic.
“My perspective is: Make the U.F.C. cash, they usually’ll be glad to pay you,” mentioned Sean O’Malley, the present bantamweight champion. “I’m apparently making the U.F.C. some huge cash, as a result of I’m making some huge cash.”
Still, some disputes with fighters have been strikingly private, forging Mr. White’s repute for vindictiveness.
His feud with Mr. Ortiz, whose reputation helped maintain the U.F.C. in leaner years, grew to become so bitter that the 2 almost boxed one another in an exhibition match.
“He sort of smashed my identify,” Mr. Ortiz mentioned, noting his non-V.I.P. standing at at this time’s fights. “I’ve to pay $2,000 to go to U.F.C. in Miami.”
If nothing else, Mr. White has succeeded in defending his flanks financially — even from nominal allies like Mr. Trump.
In 2008, along with his practiced grandeur, Mr. Trump introduced that he would put money into his personal blended martial arts group, Affliction Entertainment, to compete with the U.F.C.
Michael Cohen, then a Trump Organization government, was chief working officer. The inaugural Affliction occasion featured appearances from Megadeth, the heavy metallic group, and Fedor Emelianenko, a celebrated Russian heavyweight.
“I feel we may be in right here for the long term,” Donald Trump Jr. predicted.
They folded after two occasions.
While Mr. White was not above tweaking any would-be rival — “Donald Trump owns casinos,” he mentioned pointedly — the 2 remained cordial, exceptional given how every sometimes greeted enterprise threats.
Mr. White publicly vowed to by no means say a nasty phrase about Mr. Trump, remembering his early enhance.
And Mr. Trump made a behavior of protecting in contact.
When the U.F.C. reached a broadcast settlement with Fox Sports in 2011, Mr. White has mentioned, Mr. Trump mailed a newspaper article about it with some heat scribbles, admiring his personal instincts.
“Congratulations, Dana,” the message learn. “I all the time knew you had been gonna do it.”
Just Political Enough
As an government, Mr. White usually engaged with politicians as Mr. Trump as soon as had: situationally and transactionally, with out a lot regard for ideology.
In 2010, Mr. White campaigned with Harry Reid, his dwelling state’s Democratic senator. He spoke kindly of then-Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. when Mr. Biden traveled to Nevada to do the identical, sharing a billing with Mr. White.
So when Mr. Trump requested Mr. White to deal with the 2016 Republican National Convention, Mr. Reid’s former chief of workers, David Krone, was shocked to discipline a message from an affiliate of Mr. White’s: Did he know any good speechwriters?
“I used to be similar to, ‘Uh, I may ask?’” mentioned Mr. Krone, whose former boss had been flaming Mr. Trump all through the marketing campaign. (He didn’t discover any takers.)
Onstage in Cleveland that July, Mr. White appeared amused at his personal attendance. “I’m positive most of you might be questioning,” he started, “‘What are you doing right here?’”
He reminisced about Mr. Trump’s hospitality in Atlantic City and his loyalty as a buddy. (Affliction didn’t come up.) He mentioned that he knew fighters and that Mr. Trump match the specs.
But at instances in 2016, Mr. White took care to say that they didn’t agree on every little thing, downplaying Mr. Trump’s build-the-wall guarantees and suggesting he may get “somewhat too overrated” in entrance of a digicam.
While Mr. White appeared to understand the perks that adopted the election — a gathering on Air Force One, a dinner within the White House residence, impromptu hold-for-the-president telephone calls — he principally eliminated himself from every day political battle till Covid arrived.
As with many Trump-inclined figures, the pandemic appeared to harden Mr. White’s skepticism of professional consensus and establishments, a place that occurred to align along with his enterprise pursuits.
Determined to maintain the U.F.C. working within the spring of 2020, Mr. White additionally appeared to acknowledge an unprecedented alternative: having the sports activities panorama basically to himself.
Weeks into the pandemic, he tried and failed to bypass virus restrictions by holding fights on Native American tribal land in California. (State officers intervened, voicing considerations on to Disney, the dad or mum firm of the U.F.C.’s new broadcast associate, ESPN.)
By May, Mr. White and his fighters had turned as an alternative to lockdown-weary Florida, broadcasting from an empty enviornment in Jacksonville for the primary main American skilled sporting occasion within the Covid age. “Gate was zero — attendance was zero,” he advised reporters afterward, grinning on the surreal novelty. “That’s a primary.”
He additionally made plans, with assist from Mr. Emanuel, for a “Fight Island” in Abu Dhabi, hoping to stage fights in a pseudo-bubble over the summer time.
Epidemiologists winced. The U.F.C. appeared to violate its personal security protocols in Florida. (Two leaders of the American pandemic response, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, mentioned they might not keep in mind having any interactions with Mr. White on the time.)
But fighters had been grateful — “for him to push ahead on that was legendary,” Mr. O’Malley mentioned — and different leagues had been, too.
“He was being championed as, ‘You’re being the guinea pig, however you’re on the market proving that life can proceed,’” mentioned Mark Shapiro, the president of Endeavor, whose live-event companies had been sputtering by the pandemic. “League commissioners had been ecstatic.”
It helped that Mr. White had the enthusiastic blessing of the sitting president, who recorded a video message for the Florida struggle (“We need our sports activities again”) and held up the U.F.C. as a mannequin for nationwide resourcefulness.
The interval established Mr. White as a MAGA luminary of the best order — “You had been the very best on Covid,” Charlie Kirk reminded his viewers final 12 months throughout their interview about Bud Light — codifying a long-running merger between his orbit and Mr. Trump’s.
Mr. Trump’s marketing campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, is a former U.F.C. worker.
Tucker Carlson, a bow-tied man of letters when the U.F.C. got here of age, discovered himself subsumed by the struggle craze. “It’s completely wild,” he mentioned in a textual content message, after attending a U.F.C. occasion (with Mr. Trump) final 12 months. “One of these stuff you’ve obtained to see in individual.”
Some of the game’s stars, like Colby Covington and Jorge Masvidal, campaigned for Mr. Trump in 2020. (Mr. Covington would later echo Mr. Trump’s “rigged election” chorus when struggle judges dominated towards him.)
Joined by Mr. White at a 2020 rally in Arizona, Mr. Trump imagined the election as a cage match he may dominate.
“I don’t suppose Sleepy Joe could be a very good fighter, do you?” Mr. Trump mentioned. “I requested Dana earlier than. One mild little contact to the face and he’s down.”
By the time Mr. White spoke at his second Republican conference, no person questioned what he was doing there.
“Many of who I’m, what I do,” he mentioned, “and that I’m mates with the president.”
‘Sinatra’ for the TikTookay Set
Few can query Mr. White’s capital at this level — political, cultural, monetary.
How he would possibly prefer to spend it has been much less sure.
Mr. White’s most-hyped latest pursuit, a slap-fighting operation often known as Power Slap, has doubled as a sort of referendum on his persuasive powers: Is there any restrict to what Mr. White can promote?
“It’s like a YouTuber,” mentioned Eddie Hearn, a boxing promoter who’s pleasant with him. “Once you construct a profile, you may have the power to develop something.”
As with the U.F.C., whose three hundredth pay-per-view occasion this weekend has been celebrated as a sign achievement, Mr. White insists that his slap league will likely be a phenomenon in due time. (In November, he claimed that the league, whereby rivals take turns whacking one another with out having the ability to deflect the blows, was already a $450 million enterprise.)
Reviews have been blended.
“It’s fairly brutal,” mentioned Mr. Welch, his Boston boxing mentor. “I’ve slapped some guys in my day, however Jesus Christ.”
Mr. White’s slap-fighting enterprise additionally rhymed grimly with a darkish flip in his private life: Last 12 months, a video emerged exhibiting Mr. White and his spouse, Anne, slapping one another throughout an argument at a New Year’s Eve party in Mexico.
Mr. White had as soon as mentioned that “placing your fingers on a lady” was the “one factor that you simply by no means bounce again from.”
“Been that means within the U.F.C. since we began,” he mentioned in 2014.
While Mr. White has since apologized for making his youngsters “see their dumb, drunk mother and father slapping one another on TMZ,” main enterprise companions stayed largely silent.
One ESPN author posted online that he had been suggested “to not write something incendiary” in regards to the scenario.
The community’s largest star, Stephen A. Smith, appeared to provide Mr. White some on-air cowl, saying that whereas there was no excusing the conduct, Mr. White was a buddy who knew he had crossed a line. (Mr. Smith is represented by WME, which can also be owned by Endeavor.)
Among Mr. White’s allies on the appropriate, the controversy was successfully ignored, reflecting the wagon-circling that comes from subsisting inside a political tribe and its info bubbles.
In latest years particularly, Mr. White has grow to be a crossover determine in a booming lad tradition that takes place totally on YouTube and TikTookay, with gatekeepers like Dave Portnoy, the brash founding father of Barstool Sports, and the Nelk Boys, pranker-podcasters who interview U.F.C. fighters, streamers, rappers, porn stars and sometimes Mr. Trump.
For this viewers, Mr. White’s rollicking life in Las Vegas has given him credibility far past his affiliation with blended martial arts. He has mined viral video content material from the mundane (a recurring sequence that finds him taste-testing uncommon meals) and the extravagant (internet hosting web celebrities on the blackjack desk).
Recent company of Mr. White’s at a high-limit on line casino room have included Mr. Rogan, Mr. Portnoy and the streamer Adin Ross, an assemblage that Mr. Emanuel describes as a new-age Rat Pack.
“He is Sinatra,” Mr. Emanuel mentioned grandly of Mr. White, including: “This younger group of social stars — he’s the granddaddy of all of them.”
For at the least a few of his Gen Z standing, Mr. White has his household to thank. In 2020, because the U.F.C. confronted criticism for holding occasions, YouTube demonetized the Nelk Boys’ channel after the celebrities partied with maskless faculty college students. After one among Mr. White’s sons, a fan of theirs, confirmed his father their movies, Mr. White related with John Shahidi, who runs Full Send, the Nelk Boys’ enterprise. Soon, the Nelk Boys had been fixtures at fights, and Mr. White launched them to a constellation of celebrities that included the forty fifth president.
“I feel Dana went to Trump and mentioned, ‘These guys have a really cult, younger viewers,’” Mr. Shahidi mentioned.
The group, he mentioned, now speaks to the previous president repeatedly.
Rewarding Friends, Flaming Enemies
And this, as a lot as any enterprise success, is what appears to animate Mr. White most: bringing his circles of affect into nearer alignment, making America somewhat extra like Dana White.
A health evangelist, he can typically sound extra like Mr. Rogan than Mr. Rogan, advising the lots on his routine and extolling the virtues of the “seven-day water quick.”
On struggle nights, Mr. White is by turns grasp of ceremonies and overbooked administrator, hustling in his U.F.C. formal put on (jacket, no tie, darkish tones) by crowds the place quite a lot of attendees bear a resemblance to him: shaved heads, broad smiles, muscle T-shirts.
During matches, he vacillates between stern focus on a canvas-level tv monitor — typically wanting away from the stay motion a couple of ft in entrance of him — and clipped chatter with no matter eminence is seated subsequent to him.
An incorrigible name-dropper, Mr. White could make a spectacle of how interconnected his unique orbit has grow to be:
“I misplaced 20 grand to Snoop on that recreation …”
“I inform Brady this on a regular basis …” (That could be Tom.)
“@zuck,” Mr. White posted merely on Instagram after Mark Zuckerberg posed with him at a latest struggle, displeasing some followers who view the Meta chief government as an enemy to conservatives. (“Bud Light now this?” one commenter wrote.)
Mr. White’s friendship with Mr. Tyson, whom he as soon as idolized, is a specific level of delight.
Mr. Tyson, who’s 57, mentioned Mr. White had sought noncombat jobs for him within the hope that he would cease agreeing to fights. These have included a tv gig for Discovery’s Shark Week, for which Mr. Tyson grew to become much less grateful when he noticed his co-stars up shut.
“He’s apprehensive about me combating, getting harm,” Mr. Tyson mentioned. “I’m going to make a couple of million bucks, OK, Dana? The sharks should not paying.”
At instances, Mr. White seems extra serious about flexing his clout to make a degree, even when it means encouraging the sort of product-shunning he’s mentioned to abhor.
When the comedian-podcaster Theo Von advised him {that a} sponsor, Peloton, had pressured Mr. Von to drag an interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mr. White ordered the removing of Peloton bikes from U.F.C. services and repeatedly skewered the corporate in public appearances.
“We maintain kicking Peloton” beneath the belt, he mentioned later. “But they deserve it.”
Asked if extra formal campaigns would possibly await him, Mr. White has sworn he’s not serious about getting into politics.
“Hell no,” he advised ESPN’s Pat McAfee in February, to which Mr. McAfee replied that Mr. White “sort of” already has.
At least one man likes Mr. White’s ambitions simply as they’re.
Speaking at a rally in Georgia final month, Mr. Trump advised the gang that he had large plans that night: the U.F.C. fights in Miami with mates.
“Dana White,” he mentioned, naming solely one among them. “He’s executed an amazing job.”
Cheers went up immediately. The candidate seen.
“Ooohhh,” Mr. Trump mentioned. “I hope he doesn’t run for workplace towards me.”
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed analysis.
