Trump says Dana White’s “joke” press secretary appointment was defense against “bad press day”
Today, Dana White took questions from the White House press pool, giving the world a taste of what his tenure might look like if he accepted the role.
Photo: Al Drago/Getty Images
After suffering a resounding defeat in his latest bout with the American electorate, U.S. President Donald Trump iced his wounds like a real ultimate fighter: telling CBS he’d rather go to Hell than forgive his political opponents and appointing UFC president and CEO Dana White as his next press secretary as a joke. The public did not know it was just a goof when Trump posted about the appointment on his personal social media site, Truth Social, home to his incoherent rants and threats, but he has been without a White House spokesperson since Katie Zachariah’s five-day reign as the country’s 37th press secretary ended in October. At least, White has more robust media experience than the little-known Zachariah. Today, in a press conference with White, who claims he never turned down the offer, the two gave the public a look at what Press Secretary Dana White would look like. For his part, the president said he made the joke to combat the bad press.
“We were having a very bad press day,” the president said of the day he also named Stephen Miller chief of staff, “and I don’t know why I thought of his name. He’s been my friend for a long time. I said, ‘You know I think I’m going to get Dana White to be my new press secretary.’ I said it to a group of the press, and that was it. I was sort of kidding. Then, they wrote the story as though I wasn’t kidding, and you were inundated, and I was inundated, and thought we’d have a little fun. We brought Dana here. He would be fantastic.”
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