Dana White, President Trump's adrenaline junkie
The WCHD shooting raises fresh questions about UFC White House security.
UFC President Dana White found himself getting quoted by members of the DC media on Saturday night at Nerd Prom.
Smiling, with a sense of kinetic exhilaration, after an attempted shooting.
Instead of being at the APEX watching Aljamain Sterling, our favorite UFC brand ambassador was on one hell of an adrenaline rush after attending the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner (WCHD) at the Hilton hotel.
“Tables getting flipped over. Guys running in with guns and they were screaming “get down!” I didn’t get down. It was fucking awesome! I literally took every minute of it in and it was pretty, pretty crazy, unique experience.
“I was sitting, we were sitting right in front of the table, right in front of where the President was.
“Nobody got tackled. But the guys came in looking for shooters, they came towards our table. I thought the shooter was over by us or something.”
That sounds like a description of an action scene on a movie set, not an attempted murder plot at the same hotel where former US President Ronald Reagan nearly lost his life to John Hinckley.
Read the full report on Saturday night’s WHCD shooting at The New York Times.
Why was Dana White hanging out with President Trump instead of watching Saturday’s fights next to his UFC office? Apparently, for the same reasons Mr. White is more excited about Adin Ross, his celebrity boxing venture Brand Risk, and the prospects of former footballer Johnny Manziel engaging in pugilism.
As he said at the UFC 327 Miami post-fight press conference, Dana White is “fifty fucking six years old” and struggling to find a reason to get out of bed every day.
UFC fights just don’t hit Dana’s sweet spot anymore. He’s living his best post-daily UFC life. Now it’s Polymarket, Power Slap, celebrity pugilism, and DC security scares.
Setting Uncle Dana’s adrenaline rush and lack of big-picture awareness aside, the attempted shooting at the WHCD is a big story for many American national security reasons.
We’ve previously written articles and published podcasts at The MMA Draw talking about the risk of running combat sporting events in hot war zones. In 2026, you can also include Washington, D.C. into that geopolitical mix.
Enter UFC White House.
The gang that couldn’t shoot straight
Security protocols for Saturday night’s dinner were reportedly rather minimal, according to New York Post reporter Lydia Moynihan.
Veteran TV host and DC correspondent Greta Van Susteren backed up Ms. Moynihan’s account:
Comments from former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai:
Former US Secret Service New York agent Richard Staropoli claims the current state of affairs for recruitment and hiring of new US Secret Service members is far worse than anyone publicly understands. There are allegations of negligent weapon discharges (including an agent recently on duty protecting former First Lady Jill Biden), a high-profile trainee supposedly spying on another individual, and burnout, creating high roster turnover.
As this Reuters report noted, the US Senate’s own investigation into Secret Service protection of then-candidate Donald J. Trump in 2024 at the Butler assassination attempt was a bureaucratic tongue-lashing.
Former Washington Examiner reporter (and professional thorn-in-the-side of the US Secret Service) Susan Crabtree claims that there was a recent mystery shooting in DC near the White House:
These are critics with little incentive to say anything bad about President Trump, and they’re not holding back on how rotten the current state of internal US security appears to be.
Saturday night’s White House Correspondents Association dinner (WCHD) was held at the DC Hilton. President Trump’s own published surveillance video shockingly reveals how the alleged shooter blasted right past a Secret Service security checkpoint.
The political and legal backdrop for Saturday’s DC shooting is an ongoing fight between the White House and the Washington DC judicial circuit over President Trump building a brand new White House ballroom. Reportedly financed by secretly shielded private donors, of course.
On March 31, Judge Richard Leon ordered a stop to ballroom construction. The DOJ argued in court that construction of the ballroom was necessary on grounds of national security (as this Bloomberg Law article reported).
On Saturday night — a short time after the attempted WHCD shooting — President Trump gave remarks to the very same media members he was eating dinner with earlier that evening.
“We looked at all the conditions that took place tonight and I will say, you know, it’s not a particularly secure building. I didn’t want to say this, but this is why we have to have all of the attributes of what we’re planning at The White House. It’s actually a larger room and it’s a much more secure. It’s got, it’s drone-proof. If it’s bulletproof glass, we need the ballroom. That’s why Secret Service, that’s why the military are demanding it. They’ve wanted the ballroom for 150 years for lots of different reasons. But today’s a little bit different because today we need levels of security that probably nobody’s ever seen before.”
As President Obama’s former Chief of Staff — and Ari Emanuel’s brother — Rahm Emanuel famously stated in 2008,
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. What I mean by that is that it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”
President Trump’s first response of tying Saturday’s shooting to his ballroom project immediately stirred up a hornet’s nest on social media. Trending keywords revealed the intensity of current American political discourse.
False flag. Staged. Erika Kirk. Butler. Distraction.
This is the political environment that TKO is going all-in for with the UFC White House event. As much of a cultural high wire act as Mark Shapiro hiring Rush Limbaugh for ESPN’s NFL coverage in 2003.
An increasing risk profile for TKO
It’s an all-out free-for-all to grab as much government cash as quickly as possible for Mark Shapiro and TKO management.
As we recently discussed on The MMA Draw podcast, the war between America and Iran is causing all sorts of financial havoc with the various Gulf States.
The manipulation currently happening on the US stock market, especially in paper trading of commodities, is about to crash into a brick wall of reality. War is accelerating the major recalibration of Saudi & Emirati financing of sporting ventures, big and small, like snooker and rugby. Karim Zidan at Sports Politika has the gruesome details.
It’s a rush to grab as much cash as possible while TKO still can do so.
UFC on June 27th in Baku, Azerbaijan. WWE is on June 27th in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for Night of Champions.
At least it doesn’t sound as crazy as PFL MENA running an event on May 24th in Dubai at Coca-Cola Arena, but at least you can understand why PFL would aggressively pursue a somewhat risky cash grab.
But what do I know?
The aggressiveness with which combat sports players are trying to cash in while they still can is quite a delicate balancing act.
On the same week that Nick Khan was testifying in front of the US Senate on the Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act, and Dana White was in attendance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, there was Department of Homeland Security chief Markwayne Mullin watching the chaos unfold at the DC Hilton while DHS is facing incredible financial stress. The Secret Service is under the bureaucratic umbrella of DHS.
There is a legitimate chance that the Ali Revival Act could get passed before the US Senate crams through DHS funding via reconciliation.
Great for Zuffa Boxing. Maybe not so great for funding security for UFC White House?
During an April 14th interview with Ari Emanuel client Pat McAfee on ESPN, Dana White once again promised that American taxpayers would not be financing the UFC White House event. It’s a similar spin to his sales pitch in TKO-friendly Sports Business Journal last January.
I suppose these statements could be true if Federal agencies like DHS are broke, but I don’t think that measures up to the reported promises of “Super Bowl level security” for the UFC White House event.
TAIT Global is constructing the massive “claw” structure for lighting and production. With as much White House real estate and UFC production elements involved in this Paramount presentation, it’s going to require millions of dollars in government funding to deploy security assets to protect this highly sensitive political event.
Larry Ellison will be satisfied with an AI surveillance state — as long as he has a role in it. Leaving security in the hands of this US government is no longer a guaranteed proposition.
May you live in interesting times.
Zach Arnold is a lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw on Substack. His archives can be read at FightOpinion.com.
"These are critics with little incentive to say anything bad about President Trump, and they’re not holding back on how rotten the current state of internal US security appears to be."
It strikes me as a little silly that the same folks that are onboard with gutting and shrinking the government and its institutions are surprised when the government can't even buy the protection it needs to, oh, I dunno', keep a president safe during a private event. Maybe they should be investigating where all that DHS money they appropriated is going or why there's a sudden lack of trained bodies for Secret Service. (It's probably not going to TSA agents, so they can at least check that one off the list.)
You do bring up a good point though about security concerns both at the WH UFC show and future UFC and TKO shows in Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia. Do they appropriate money from their massive DHS budget for that or do they rely on rich, anonymous donors and private security? Does the WHCD incident mean that they don't hold the WH event after all if they can't get the security coverage?
For me this is pretty simple. If Trump didn’t make such shitty policies towards non Epstein billionaires class he wouldn’t get shot at.