Dana White struck a unique tone after calling the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting “f****g awesome” in comments that spread on social media.
White, the CEO of UFC, was among the thousands in attendance at the Washington Hilton hotel when authorities say 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen, armed with a shotgun, handgun and “multiple knives,” attempted to storm the event.
As many, including Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika, reacted in horror to the unfolding events, White, 56, took a different view.
“It started to get noisy. Tables started getting flipped over, guys running with guns and they were screaming, ‘Get down!’. I didn’t get down. It was f*****g awesome and I literally took every minute of it in,” he told USA Today.
“It was a pretty crazy, unique experience. We were sitting right in front of the table, right in front of where the president was. Nobody got tackled but guys came in looking for shooters, I thought the shooter was over by us or something.”
White is a keen ally of President Donald Trump and is set to promote an MMA event on the White House lawn on June 14, the commander in chief’s birthday, as part of the United States 250th birthday celebrations.
White was a guest of Paramount Skydance, the broadcaster behind UFC, at the event. He was sitting at the head table, where President Trump, the first lady, and Karoline Leavitt were seated.
Meanwhile, the president was quick to thank the Secret Service agents who took down the suspect and said that the event would go ahead at a later date.
“The response time was really incredible, and we’re going to reschedule. We’re going to do it again, we’re not going to let anybody take over our society; we’re not going to cancel things because we can’t do that. We wanted to stay tonight. I will tell you, I fought like hell to stay, but it was protocol.”
In 2025, White told Piers Morgan in an interview that in the wake of the attempt on Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania, he urged the president to drop out of the race.
The incident occurred when White was flying to Italy, he said. When he landed, he called Trump, who was already home at that point. He was “unfazed” by the harrowing encounter, White recalled.
“Why are you doing this? Stop. Stop,” he said. “I told him to stop so many times.”
“You have such a good life and you can do so many things,” White recalled telling Trump at the time. “He believes he believes in God…he’s very religious.”
Trump also told Morgan that “he thinks God must’ve had a plan for me. God wanted me to survive that bullet,” the veteran British presenter revealed.
Trump was struck in the ear by a bullet, the FBI said in the weeks following the attack.
White agreed: “He believes that to his core. That God has spared his life to be the president and do the things that he’s going to do over the next four years.”
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