Dana White’s company squeezes fighters, bullies journalists and toadies up to Trump. But it has also given neglected Olympians a path to money and fame that didn’t exist before itIf you don’t like what is being said, change the conversation. Amid the wreckage of an epic midterm beatdown, the diminished president of the United States spent part of last week channeling another Donald when he publicly floated longtime aide-de-camp Dana White – the Ultimate Fighting Championship chief executive, Meta board member and public face of professional face-slapping – as the next White House press secretary. Trump’s kayfabe featured a support team of UFC bruisers to help White keep the Washington press corps in line, a fantasy lineup that included Justin Gaethje, Daniel Cormier, Khabib Nurmagomedov and one “Kayla Harris”. Surely he meant Kayla Harrison, the twice Olympic champion judoka from small-town Ohio who on Saturday night submitted the great Amanda Nunes in the co-main event at Madison Square Garden and made a credible claim for being the greatest female mixed martial artist the sport has ever seen.Trump’s turn to White’s trademark bluster was a simple enough gambit to parse. In 2024, he rode the manosphere to an astonishing 63% backing among young white men, with White name-checking Joe Rogan, Theo Von, Adin Ross and the Nelk Boys from the victory podium like the heterodox heirs to Bill Buckley. Two years later, that support had cratered by 20 points in the midterms: the political equivalent of a 10-8 round. Suddenly, the prospect of White as some cauliflower-eared CJ Cregg seemed less like comic relief than a panicked attempt to inject a cycle of synthetic testosterone into Maga’s increasingly low-energy movement. Continue reading...