Donald Trump has claimed he was “only kidding” about an offer to make UFC chief executive Dana White the new White House press secretary.
Following the absolute battering in last week’s Midterm Elections, Trump decided to shuffle his pack. After appointing the highly controversial Stephen Miller as his new Chief of Staff, the president then baffling offered a job to Dana White.
Trump’s ‘Dana White House’ offer
With the vacancy needing to be filled in the wake of the disastrous six-day tenure of Katie Zacharia, Trump announced over the weekend that White had been offered the role.
In a post on Truth Social, he wrote: “Dana will be a Press Secretary like none other. Dana, please take the job!”
Trump described White as a “violent Fighter and Warrior” who would “defend us against the Lunatic Left.”
Whilst it was unclear how serious Trump was being – and unclear if he’d actually offered the role to the wrong Dana White – White then posted an Instagram photo of himself behind the lectern in the White House press briefing room.
“On to the next chapter,” White wrote, with the UFC boss later saying he was travelling to Washington to meet Trump on Monday.
But on Sunday evening, Trump told reporters he had been “kidding” about the whole thing.
He said that White “loves the idea” but that the invitation was “just a little fun”, adding that White was visiting him on Monday for “other reasons.”
Is Trump backtracking after a major gaffe?
Over the weekend, as people tried to make sense of the bizarre job offer to White, some theorised that this had actually been a hugely embarrassing mistake from Trump.
It turns out that another Dana White has been working within top political circles over the last decade. This Dana White has previously served as the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson from 2017 to 2018, briefing the press and communicating policy positions during Trump’s first presidential term.
What’s more, the female Dana White has also been a publicist for Fox News, and was previously employed by the conservative Heritage Foundation. So, on paper, she would seem to be the perfect candidate for the vacancy.
So, some wondered if Trump had been advised by his staff to offer the role to her, but thought they’d had meant the UFC Dana White.
So perhaps Trump’s claims that he was joking about the Dana White offer all along is simply him trying to backtrack on an embarrassing blunder.