How Donald Trump and Dana White Became Close Friends

UFC is set to stage a massive spectacle on the White House lawn this Sunday, commemorating the looming 250th anniversary of the United States of America. Trump and UFC boss Dana White have spoken effusively about their friendship with each other in the leadup to the event, which coincides with the president’s 80th birthday

Ahead of Sunday’s UFC Freedom 250, Front Office Sports spoke with Lavie Margolin, the author of Ultimate Fighters: Donald Trump, Dana White and UFC’s Road to the White House, about how the two business titans became so close. 

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Front Office Sports: As you were researching this book, how did Dana White and Donald Trump meet?

Lavie Margolin: First, there has to be a little bit of mythbusting there. Perhaps Dana White is misremembering things or things have changed in someone’s mind over time. But, one of the important things is to have that clarity. So, UFC under the ownership of SEC, had booked the Trump Taj Mahal after receiving permission from the New Jersey Athletic Commission to run a show. And Dana White was actually there in supporting his jiujitsu instructor, John Lewis, who got knocked out at the event. 

But, UFC 30 was already scheduled to be held at the Trump Taj Mahal [in Atlantic City]. So Dana White comes in at UFC 30 as the president of the UFC under Zuffa, and the Fertitta brothers. Donald Trump was not there. He was also not there at the next event, UFC 31 [note: White has said Trump was at UFC 30 and 31, but this has been disputed by a former UFC executive, and ESPN did not find “visual evidence” he was there]. 

Where Donald Trump did show up was UFC 32 at the Continental Airlines Arena [at the Meadowlands]. That was nice in terms of lending celebrity credibility to the UFC, which was struggling for it at the time. However, there isn’t necessarily a documented interaction in the early days in terms of UFC 30 and 31. It was just permitted under Trump, however much he was managing the day-to-day interactions. That was sort of the seed of their relationship. 

FOS: How did it develop from there?

LM: Interestingly, a few years later, Trump was announced as an investor in Affliction MMA. The Affliction clothing brand was quite successful at the time, but had been banned from UFC. So, they figured, “Let’s start our own promotion,” and they had some mega-events. The first was in LA. They just ended up having three, but Trump was sort of the figurehead of them. He held press conferences at Trump Tower and that sort of thing. 

Usually, in the history of Dana White, he’d be sniping back and forth with other promotions and shading them. But there, White said something along the lines of, “I’ll never speak bad about Donald Trump. He gave us the opportunity when no one else would.” And Donald Trump would talk about what a great businessman Dana White was. In the public eye, that helped to establish really good rapport between them. 

Fast forward some more years to the 2010s, and Donald Trump was looking in the New York Times, and he would see articles about the UFC and its growth. Those articles were written about Ronda Rousey, and Trump would clip them out of the paper and he would mail them to Dana White and say, like, “Just so proud of your success, Dana.”

FOS: How has Trump’s political career factored into their relationship?

LM: When Trump was running for president the first time, he decided that the RNC convention would be partly like a night of winners of sports celebrities and people like that. 

That was where it really solidified this ongoing relationship in the public eye, where the word came out that Dana White would be one of the speakers. When he was asked by a reporter, he hadn’t even heard about it yet, but he quickly agreed to do it. And then they were sort of off and running in the last 11 years.

FOS: You also wrote a book about Trump and Vince McMahon. How would you compare and contrast the relationship between Trump and Vince and Trump and Dana? 

LM: I believe that the relationship with Dana and Donald Trump is one not only of mutual business partnership and respect, but a real friendship—especially like the way Dana White talks about it. He told Rolling Stone, “I don’t want anything from him. I’m not looking for anything from him. There’s nothing transactional in our relationship. We’re friends. And when we get together, it’s literally no different than any other person in this room when you get together with somebody you’re friends with. You talk about things that friends talk about. I think when he is dealing with shit that I can’t even dream of, when he wants to get away, he comes to a UFC fight.”

Donald Trump also talks about their friendship in a very positive manner. Obviously he feels, in this public way, very close to Dana White. And a lot of it is really interconnected, in terms of the politics and the business side playing out right in front of us. 

For TrumpMania with Vince McMahon, it was really business-aligned and then grew in terms of respect. To bring in casual gamblers, especially on Easter weekend, you’d want to have something different than boxing. WWF at the time was really fairly mainstream. Using WrestleMania 4 and 5 in Atlantic City [adjacent to Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino] was really successful there. But then things were kind of left alone until it was really a great business idea to have a hair vs. hair match [at WrestleMania 23, where Trump and McMahon put their respective hair on the line in a match between Bobby Lashley and Umaga]. 

Trump was even named the “owner” of Monday Night Raw for a time, which confused Wall Street. The stock dropped, and then they ended up dropping the idea a couple of weeks later. But it really established a point of mutual respect. Donald Trump, at times, and Vince McMahon, for most of his life, have been sort of like searching for respect in the public eye. A lot of times, there’s negativity towards them. For Donald Trump, The Apprentice was sort of a respite from that, where he was just looked at very positively, especially in the early seasons. 

There were donations from the McMahon family. They visited him at the White House. Most prominently right now, although they are said to be separated, is, of course, Linda McMahon serving as Secretary of Education after having run the Small Business Administration previously. So there is a connection between the families. 

But I think with Dana White, as an amateur psychologist, with about a 25-year age gap, it’s almost like looking at Trump like a father figure, the way he talks about it and interacts with him.