Dana White plays the role of Donald Trump's connection between UFC and politics

UFC President DANA WHITE has emerged as a “vital ally” to former (and maybe future) U.S. President DONALD TRUMP, “carefully tending a mutually invaluable friendship that stretches more than 20 years,” according to Flegenheimer & Berstein of the N.Y. TIMES. Since the early 2000s, when Trump’s “imprimatur helped buttress a down-and-out UFC,” through his White House tenure, the two men have “worked to enshrine mixed martial arts as the MAGA movement’s semiofficial sport.” White has become Trump’s “conduit to modern fight fans,” whose demographics “track neatly with an essential chunk of the remodeled Republican base.” But after the reported nine-figure deal last fall to make Bud Light the UFC’s official beer sponsor, White “suddenly stood accused of selling out.” According to sources, when a final holdout “continued hammering the company in February,” White spoke to Trump on the phone and Trump was “sheepish about causing any headaches.” Within days, Trump suggested on social media that Anheuser-Busch deserved “a second chance,” ticking through “talking points that sounded suspiciously” like White’s. More than anything, UFC has supplied Trump with a “consistent safe harbor since he left office.” To this day, Trump speaks with “high fluency” about the history and intricacies of the UFC. White “publicly vowed” to never say a bad word about Trump, remembering his early boost. While White “seemed to appreciate the perks” that followed the election in 2016, he mostly “removed himself” from daily political conflict until Covid arrived. The period established White as a “MAGA luminary of the highest order,” codifying a “long-running merger between his orbit” and Trump’s (N.Y. TIMES, 4/14).