Striding to the stage on the Republican Nationwide Conference on Thursday, Dana White started his introduction of Donald Trump with a clarification. “No person tells me what to say,” he mentioned, “and I’m no one’s puppet.” Rattling with enthusiasm and jabbing a finger on the viewers, he had come to Milwaukee to play the hype man, and to vouch for Trump’s bona fides.
“I’m within the powerful man enterprise,” White went on, “and this man’s the hardest, most resilient man I’ve ever met in my life.”
The pairing–UFC CEO and Republican presidential nominee–was acquainted. Their friendship dates again to the Nineties, when Atlantic Metropolis’s Trump Taj Mahal hosted a sport that was then largely thought-about too violent for the mainstream. As their relationship deepened, every continued to develop in stature and affect. By 2016, when White spoke on the Republican Nationwide Conference for the primary of 3 times, he was presiding over a full-fledged empire that had commanded a $4 billion acquisition. In June, shortly after Trump was convicted in his hush-money trial, his first post-felony public look was at a UFC battle.
Even by modern Trump requirements, the previous president has lately assumed a brand new license to say outlaw standing. “Lots of people say it’s essentially the most iconic photograph they’ve ever seen,” he told the New York Publish on Sunday, the day after his tried assassination, as he mirrored on an immediately indelible picture–fist raised, ear bleeding. Some attendees on the conference this week wore bandages on their ears in homage to their chief, echoing the passion on show amongst all method of machismo fanatics. 50 Cent, whose early rise was fueled by his personal taking pictures survival, gleefully posted photos of Trump’s face plastered over his debut album cowl. “If it isn’t obvious sufficient who God needs to win,” Jake Paul wrote on X. And White, showing on ESPN this week, and all the time functioning as a form of elder statesman for the online-sports-Trump nexus populated by so many younger males, made the case most plainly.
“This man is the reliable, final American badass of all time,” he advised Pat McAfee.
On stage on Thursday, White, talking shortly after Hulk Hogan and a efficiency by Child Rock, struck largely the identical notes for 5 minutes. “I do know I’m gonna select actual American management,” he boomed, “and an actual American badass.” He was in his trademark outfit of a darkish go well with and open white shirt, along with his shaved head gleaming underneath the RNC lights. Earlier within the day, as he flew from Italy to Milwaukee for this present of vitality, he wrote on Instagram that he was “19 hours into one other quick.”
Since Trump’s election, White has continued to develop his fame and monetary would possibly. He launched Energy Slap, a slap combating competitors that, like UFC earlier than it, has been broadly condemned as too grotesque to go on. Tickets to a UFC bout at The Sphere in Las Vegas in September are anticipated to be a few of the most costly in historical past. At a rally in Georgia in March, hours after attending a UFC battle in Miami, Trump counseled his pal’s successes, joking that he hoped White “doesn’t run for workplace in opposition to me.”
Within the mannequin of virility White exalted on Thursday, the previous and future president would make for a worthy counterpart to his personal unbiased streak. However by this level within the lengthy and symbiotic relationship between the 2 males, he thought he hardly wanted to elucidate why.
“I’m not telling you what to suppose,” White advised the feverish viewers. “I’m telling you what I do know.”
