UFC at the White House: How Dana White and Donald Trump Cashed In

The president's birthday-party fight card is straight out of central casting — and chock-full of political favor-trading. Who stands to gain the most? Luke Thomas unapologetically explains why everyone, from MMA fans to D. C. pundits, is missing the real story... then unearths fresh evidence of a purely transactional relationship. • Take the PTFO audience survey https://forms.gle/i2K6FecAbvBqDxRK9 • Subscribe to "Morning Kombat" https://pod.link/1471183444 with Luke Thomas • Subscribe to Pablo's newsletter https://pablo.show/ • Subscribe to The Athletic https://theathletic.onelink.me/eNRy/ptfo Previously on PTFO: • The Right-Wing Takeover of Combat Sports Is Upon Us https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjllMDRlNjljMjc3MWU3MzgxYTgxMTI2 • The White House's Dirty Takeover of Public Golf Courses https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/Njk3MmM4NmM4MjYyMjk4OTcwMGU5NjZj Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre and today, we're gonna find out what this sound is.

• 0:06Speaker 01

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• 0:11Speaker 00

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• 0:47Speaker 03

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• 0:53Speaker 04

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• 0:54Speaker 03

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• 1:02Speaker 03

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• 2:26Pablo Torre?

  You live in DC?

• 2:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:28Pablo Torre?

  So, watching the erection of this figurative erection, but this literal structure go up at the White House has been a local news story for you then?

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. I did Northern California radio yesterday, and it was kind of funny because the well-intentioned host had asked me, "Are your neighbors planning any watch parties for this event?" And I was like, "Mmm, no. No. That is not the kind of vibe in DC."

• 3:02Speaker 06

  Well, good morning. Yeah, this is all because of the UFC fight and the associated events here down by the White House, the ellipse and the like. If you look behind me here, you can see everything that has been put in place here on the ellipse. That's where the Fan Fest is going to happen. If you kind of look beyond that stage up high, you can see the top of the fighting ring of the so-called Claw that's on the south lawn of the White House. Now, this is an event that is not without controversy. Some people not too crazy about it happening here and specifically in this area. But whatever your feelings are, that fight is going to happen on Sunday. That's the president's birthday.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  I grew up in DC in the 1980s, and I have seen so much change happen to the city. I've seen what Republican administrations do. I've seen what Democratic administrations do. And there is just nothing like what Trump is doing to the city now. That is visible in any number of ways. National Guard deployment, which is, if you're not from DC, you will not appreciate this. But if you'll come, you will see I'm not making this up. They have nothing to do. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. I know he had to take his name off, but he tried to put it on the Kennedy Center.

• 4:10Pablo Torre?

  Public golf courses.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  So, that's the one that really got me because that's the East Potomac Golf Course, also known as Haynes Point. It's a whole park system.

• 4:17Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  In the 1980s, I took a Red Cross seminar to learn how to swim there. And when my daughter turned two, there's a playground just at the end of it. And my daughter had her second birthday there. It was during the middle of the pandemic. We were looking for an outdoor space. It was one of the few that was available. He completely took it over. And then he wants to have his arch. And if you've lived in DC a long time... You know, this kind of event fits into this larger pattern of the president just deciding that public spaces are his and his alone to do with what he wants. On the other hand, I feel like everybody is getting this story wrong. It is driving me crazy.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  And everyone wants to say, oh, isn't it, I don't know, garish or tacky or whatever. But I'm like, the story of this fight is the union between the Ultimate Fighting Championship and the Trump administration. This is merely the wedding between them. They've been dating for years and every mainstream outlet is just now realizing that this has been a thing, that this train left the station, Pablo, a long time ago. What I want people to focus on is the union, not whether or not they feel like it doesn't match with their class interpretation of an event on the White House lawn.

• 6:00Pablo Torre?

  You, Luke Thomas, guy who loves MMA, who grew up covering and watching the sport. The thing that strikes you is not the octagon structure that has been constructed on the lawn of the White House. It's the way in which that archway is a wedding arch, is the formalized marriage between the private and the public, between the UFC, the private institution that is governing, of course, mixed martial arts predominantly, and our government as run by Donald Trump.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  That's right. The largest mixed martial arts promotion in the world has partnered with one of the most extreme political projects I have seen in my 46 years on this planet, that they helped return him to power. And that they did so at a time when law enforcement was bearing down on him. That is the story. The story is not there's going to be a bunch of fights on the White House. Seems to me very much an aesthetic consideration versus a substantive one. I've talked to so many people about this event in the last, especially the last couple of weeks. And not a single question is about the fights. There is undeniable quality, I would say, to the card itself, but it's more than that.

• 7:18Pablo Torre?

  Is this gonna be a good card? Is this a serious sporting event? Like, what is this from an MMA perspective?

• 7:24Speaker 01

  So I think this is a good question. And I'm really glad you asked it because it's important to understand the MMA fans' perspective here. Now, I think there's probably gonna be a lot of MMA fans who don't want me to articulate their perspective, but I will do my honest to God goodness best. Number one, there's no fat on this card. So normally, a UFC event will be 10, 12, sometimes 14 fights. It can be a lot. This is half that, it's seven. It was originally gonna be six. President Trump asked for a last-minute kind of addition to one. They were able to make it work. So there's gonna be a seven total fights, but there's no fat on this card. There's nobody hanging on by a thread in their career. Everyone who is here, these are high achievers. There's a belt on the line in the main event. There is an interim belt on the line in the co-main event. And this is the other portion.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  A lot of MMA fans are gonna look at this and say to themselves, does it meet my checklist? And my checklist is, we want big atmosphere. We want a big show. We want big stakes in the fights. We want big, we want just big. And from their perspective, they're not necessarily trying to understand it on political terms. In fact, like, I often think of when I go on your show here, like, who am I talking to? I do not believe I am talking to them. I believe I'm talking to other people out there. And this White House event is, like, the appeal of it is very easy to understand within the MMA bubble. So, yes, like, there is value to this card.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Like, on one level, I've seen people say, you know, oh, you're gonna boycott this card? No, not at all. Like, real fighting of

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Legitimate importance in the MMA sphere is happening. We got the White House on one angle, we got the Washington Monument on the other. What is there to dislike? That is how I believe they would try to describe the situation here. Whether or not others see it that way, obviously, is a matter of interpretation.

• 9:17Pablo Torre?

  It does remind me that as this thing is happening, and by the way, it is coinciding, of course, with the special birthday celebration of the president, as opposed to the actual July 4th, 250th anniversary, which has been brought up in litigation against this thing, which is its own, I suppose, digression away from what I want to get to here. It does have the feel of, it's a feel of like, Street Fighter. As in, there are scenes in the background that are particular to a given geographic locale, and then there are the, there is the audience that is meant to resemble something, and in this case, the guys watching the fight are a very, very specifically curated group.

• 10:01Speaker 07

  Senior Pentagon leaders are putting together lists of US service members who could have the chance to attend President Donald Trump's White House UFC event, but in order to qualify, those troops must meet the military's body composition standards. Those regulations say that troops must have a waist-to-height ratio of .55. What does that mean? The average male in the United States is about 5'9", and that means he would have to have a 37-inch waist in order to qualify for free admission to this UFC event. The average woman, on the other hand, in the United States is about 5'4", meaning her waist would need to be about 35 inches in order to get the free tickets.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  So they're there for a very specific purpose. Let's be very clear about this. One of the things that you see, and I think the best way to understand what the UFC is doing here is just to ask what Saudi Arabia has been doing in boxing. To me, it's not very much dissimilar to that. There are some meaningful differences, but that's a great way to understand it. So when it comes to the troops, first of all, cards on the table, I know we talked about it last time, but for any folks who might have missed, from 1998 to 2004, I was in the Marine Corps, I was just a reservist, had a very ordinary career, but it gave me some insight into how some of these things work. It is not at all surprising to me that they are having troops there, number one. And the reason why is someone's gonna say, oh, they're there as a prop, of course, right? Wouldn't be the first administration, won't be the last, but yes, they are there as a prop. But it's actually more important than that.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  When Saudi Arabia has tried these like really extravagant locales, the Giza one worked, the Pyramids of Giza, that worked, but they tried one in Times Square. I don't know if you recall this.

• 11:27Pablo Torre?

  Oh, God, that's right.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  And it was a disaster. It was a complete disaster.

• 11:31Pablo Torre?

  Why? Why was it disaster?

• 11:32Speaker 01

  So for a bunch of reasons, but the one I want to focus in on, like, why the troops are there? Is because, dude, if you fill up an arena, I don't care how small or how big, with people who aren't traditionally fight fans, and then fights happen in the way that fights do, and the crowd doesn't react the way that a normal, fight-friendly crowd would, it destroys the fight. It destroys the atmosphere. It is much more detrimental than you might imagine.

• 11:58Pablo Torre?

  The product requires an atmosphere and an audience.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  It's a call and response between the action and the fans themselves. And anybody who knows anything about the military will tell you, these are rock-ribbed fight fans. So they're gonna hoot and holler at exactly the right time. They're gonna know exactly what to look for. And who else is there, Pablo? Well, if you got a million and a half large, you can get a sponsorship package, AKA a kind of ticket to get in. These people, they probably think that these fights are gonna end with someone throwing a hammer into the middle of the octagon. They don't know anything about fighting. They don't know anything about who's on the card. They don't care, they're there because it's the Deloitte, KPMG, Booze Allen, Boeing, Raytheon class of DC senate staffers or whoever, who are there to schmooze, to get political favors. That's why they're there.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  They will destroy the atmosphere if it's just them. But you pump in the troops and all of a sudden, now you've got automatic atmosphere. You're asking about the height and weight requirements. I don't think it's all, I mean, that part to me is really not particularly offensive. But the thing for me that I always go back to is, I always ask people, people, people love to use the troops, and they never, ever do anything actually for them. Have you been to Walter Reed? Cause I have. I wrote an article for UFC magazine on a guy who now has a jiu-jitsu school in DC, who was training guys in what they called adaptive jiu-jitsu, because one guy would have an arm blown off. I saw a guy who was a triple amputee that went to the new Walter Reed.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Some of those guys are gonna meet height and weight requirements, but most are not. That's exactly the kind of guy who needs to be at this event. That is exactly the kind of person that needs to be prioritized. If you want, you know, jacked, good-looking troops, I get it. That's part of the atmosphere. I certainly understand it as calculated as it all may be. But if you actually really care about the troops, you take care of the ones who have taken care of us the most.

• 13:55Pablo Torre?

  In all of this, of course, as the president himself likes to say, a central casting dimension to his preferences for how the federal government, how public money is dispersed and how it is portraying the vision of America that he wants. So that too, I'm like, again, I'm not especially scandalized. It's just very on the nose. And then you, of course, have the reports around all of these celebrities that were invited. And, you know, it's The Rock, but The Rock apparently is not going to show up. It is Mario Lopez. It's sort of like the gamut of just like, who could we get to come to this thing? And co-sign it? Because of course, stardom is a big criteria of what Trump wants. Will the stars come out for this?

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Remember, The Rock's company makes the shoes for the fighters. That's who actually does that. So for him to not post, kind of noteworthy. You'll recall, he endorsed Biden. He didn't endorse anyone this time. I don't know what, you know, whether his sympathies changed. I think he may have just decided to remove himself.

• 14:51Pablo Torre?

  As many, by the way, athletes and celebrities have.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's kind of interesting.

• 14:54Pablo Torre?

  Not going to get involved this time.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  It was so funny, right? Because I had seen on social media, among people on the left, they were like, wow, you know what? All those acts from the Freedom 250 concert, they, they're all pulling out. Which was true. It got to the next level and they were like, all the UFC fighters are pulling out. I'm like, no, no, that's not happening. Number one, they won't get paid. Number two, this is a coveted slot to them. I mean, you can like that fact or you can hate that fact, but it's a fact. And that, however, has nothing to do with the celebrity side. So The Rock has been seen at UFC events for actually quite a long while. Adam Sandler, I think you can throw in there too.

• 15:27Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  Jared Leto might show up. I don't know if they invited him or not, but he is, you know, front and center. Anthony Kiedis, another one of these guys in Red Hot Chili Peppers.

• 15:36Pablo Torre?

  Tom Brady, Jason Statham.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Tom Brady might, because he's deep in business with Saudi Arabia too.

• 15:41Pablo Torre?

  But all of this is again decor around the larger partnership. And I do want to just get to this thing that has now been announced this week, which is... Even beyond, by the way, even beyond the commemorative coins, because of course they're commemorative coins.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Right, why wouldn't there be at 4X valuation?

• 15:59Pablo Torre?

  Yes, why wouldn't there be another opportunity for Donald Trump and Dana White to cash in by selling commemorative coins? There's also the bigger play, which is this memorandum of understanding that as of Thursday is now official.

• 16:14Speaker 07

  We're excited about what this brand means, about America's ability to expand and reach out to different parts of the world. You will see these cards, you're hosting them in 17 or 18 different jurisdictions. That's gonna, that's gonna grow, in my opinion. And as you grow more countries that you go to and do this, but in the end, it will be an American company and an American brand that's bringing this sport, even though it may be their fighters, bringing this sport to those places. And that is the definition of American soft diplomatic power.

• 16:42Pablo Torre?

  And I just want to geolocate this as well because currently, we're at war with Iraq. There are lots of foreign policy disasters for the White House to consider. But the thing that's coming out of this, that I did not know was happening until this week, is this idea that Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, and Dana White, CEO of the UFC, they are going to use cage fights for diplomacy, which is the headline in the New York Post. And just the idea of, quote, "marking a new public-private partnership to enhance sports diplomacy initiatives and collaborate on the global growth of mixed martial arts."

• 17:23Pablo Torre?

  What part of this jumps off the page to you?

• 17:28Speaker 01

  This is, as I kind of indicated previously, for a lot of people, one of the questions I've been getting asked is, "Wow, do you think the UFC might be seen as being political as a result of this White House event?" And I'm like, "Where have you been? Where have you been?" So partly, it's this sort of first recognition that there is a relationship between Trump and the UFC that they may have not been aware of before, and now they're beginning to have to work backwards from it. But to more- Properly answer that question, what I'm gonna say is you cannot understand the modern UFC, and frankly TKO more broadly, actually, unless you understand how much government largesse and government favoritism powers that business.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  So you might ask, how is that the case? Well, the White House event is not a thing they can do like every week or something. It's maybe the only time they ever do it. I'm sure it will be big for them. You'll have seen the lawsuit with their alleging, you know, it's a for-profit kind of hold you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours kind of situation, yes, but it's much more simple than that. One of the things that we've noticed with the fight game more recently is a lot of guys aren't fighting in territories that they're from. Another thing that happens is like they'll just go to a place and you don't understand why they're prioritizing that when there's like other hot markets. So for example, UFC hasn't gone to Spain yet. Spain might be the most red hot MMA market in all of Europe right now. And in fact, the guy who's in the champion, who's in the main event of this card essentially represents Spain.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  He's kind of like the vanguard of what is happening there. They won't go there, but I will tell you this, they're gonna go to Belgrade, Serbia soon, and they've been going to Saudi Arabia, and they've been going to Qatar, and they've been going to all these GCC countries, UAE a million times. And it's because they're getting site fees, they're getting governments to pay for them to show up and just host an event there. I don't know exactly how it's presented in every single country in which it's done, but this is now not just international, it's true domestically. Why hasn't the UFC been to Hawaii? Partly it's a issue of the venue, partly it's an issue of the timing, but UFC has even said the tourism board there wouldn't give us enough money, so we won't go.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  If you don't know anything about MMA, you might miss the fact that Hawaii has a claim to actually producing the best fighter ever in BJ Penn. He had a fall off, but for a brief moment in time, he was one of the best guys I've ever seen in my life. And they've never been there. It's not an accident, it's because they're going where the money is. They signed a deal to bring cards to Salt Lake. What is Salt Lake City? Is that a fight city? Not as far as I know, it doesn't matter, but they're using that kind of money. And now, it's again, it expands well beyond this. Now- You have this situation where they're trying to get legislation, we talked about this last time we were here, the boxing legislation pushed through, they're having this White House event on the lawn while the president owns stock in TKO so they can say whatever they want, "Oh, it's in a trust that his kids run."

• 20:22Speaker 01

  First of all, I'm not a toddler, I don't have to believe everything that they say. And more to the point, even if it's true, it's immaterial because he's gonna benefit just the same. And now, what you're seeing is this situation with Marco Rubio and the State Department, if they, again, as of the time of this recording, some of the details are not clear, but some of them are suggestive of potentially a robust partnership, let's say, between them, and I'm gonna make up something, let's imagine now that the State Department is helping to pay for them to have events in whatever regions that they want, or at a bare minimum, just, "Hey, this is a private-public partnership," even if we're in France, presented to you by, you know, whatever agency or...

• 21:00Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  Because by the way, UFC, until, uh, until the murder of Renee Good in Minnesota, they were airing ICE ads, you know, and, and ICE actually had a memo internally that they were targeting UFC fans. There's just been a union, not merely between the government and the UFC, although that is true, and TKO more broadly, but now what you're seeing is specifically the spoils system, this patrimonialism that comes from the Trump administration to UFC.

• 21:27Pablo Torre?

  Yeah. One of the quotes that's already made it out about this partnership between Marco Rubio and Dana White is, quote, "Its events are broadcast worldwide and contribute to the United States broader cultural and sports influence through professional competition and athlete development," end quote, which is to say that what they're arguing is, this business, this capitalistic enterprise, public and private, what it does is it exports American-ness, American soft power, and projects it out across parts of the globe that we, in the government, want to see under our spell. And it just reminds me that, oh yeah, right, uh, we used to have something like this, it was called USAID.

• 22:13Pablo Torre?

  The idea of like when you see an American flag flying in another country, it's because there was this federal program that was meant among many things to combat disease and to alleviate poverty and to be a refuge for suffering people scattered across the world in the most war-torn places.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Soft power, they call it.

• 22:31Pablo Torre?

  Soft power. That was, at one point, a very, I would say, well-proven mechanism of how to export whatever it is to be American out to the rest of the planet. Cynical, but also virtuous in the same breath. This feels like what they're replacing it with. We're gonna have people do MMA under the auspices of that same flag.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  Two ways to understand it. One is just the terms you're kind of introducing it, namely, what is the message being sent with something like this? It's about American muscle. It's about, you know, this kind of hyper-masculine sense of, not the power that they have, but how they wield it as well. This represents us, I think, is what the government is trying to send with that. There's another angle to kind of consider here that I think is part of it, namely, that I, you know, the Trump administration, I think I want to say this if I may. If you look at American corruption in terms of the presidencies over the many generations, they're very different in many ways. Now, Trump is unique in that he is just so brazen and open with it.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  It's kind of funny, like Iran-Contra, hidden, you know, Watergate, hidden. Trump doesn't do that at all. So there's different ways in which you can measure it. But if you're talking about self-aggrandizement, monetizing the office of the presidency, in that particular regard, it's really not even arguable. Just the math alone on the Trump Organization itself going to $3.4 billion. He's the most corrupt president in the United States history when it comes to dollar amount self-aggrandizement. It's literally not even debatable. Not even debatable. So what I'm trying to sort of underscore here is there's just an enormous amount of like if you're inside Trump world and you are favored within it

• 24:25Speaker 01

  they steer government resources to boost or you know otherwise support your business. Why do I bring all this up? I don't know if what I'm about to tell you is true, especially now that they're gonna get their business juiced. But up until recently MMA is contracting worldwide. Because if you look at the number of events that have taken place in the United States, in Brazil and Russia, why is this relevant? These are the three largest markets for MMA in the world. There has been a steady decline in the overall aggregate number of events. MMA media has contracted enormously. The regional scene has suffered massively. Now, there are some bright spots, Europe's a bright spot, Japan's a bright spot.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  But there is some reason to believe it's contracting. And so what do you do in a world where you don't have any pay-per-view? Yes, but you don't even have pay-per-view stars anymore. In a sport that could be contracting, what can you do to alter the circumstances of that? And they've been doing it for a long time already with the site fees on the TKO side. But it's getting juiced by the government. Like that is a potentially massively powerful way to introduce a kind of boost that like, just ask yourself about this White House card. Conor comes back next month.

• 25:40Pablo Torre?

  Conor McGregor.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Right, Conor McGregor goes back next month. Now, that's gonna be a big deal, okay? But what could they do in terms of the earned media that they're getting for this event? What could they do to get that organically? What event could they put on organically to match this? The answer is nothing. Nothing, they cannot put that on. Conor would do a huge number, that's true. But I mean, in terms of like all the political media that they're getting, Conor's not gonna pull them. He's just not, he's gonna pull all the sports and he'll pull all of MMA. And so you just have to ask yourself, what do we do to make this A, more profitable? But also secure a position for as long as we can by just embedding government contracting into the way that we do business?

• 26:34Pablo Torre?

  Hello, it's me Pablo. We have been very interested in what you guys actually like about this show. And so in the show notes, there is a survey. You'll find it magically as a link somewhere down there. And you can tell us what you want more of, what you want less of, what annoys you about me, and potentially all of my friends. We will use this to improve the show. It takes like 30 seconds, so please fill it out. And we will make this better. Allegedly. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. With Apple Card, you earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases, like groceries, or merch, or tickets to the game. Plus, it can be used anywhere MasterCard is accepted. No matter your team, no matter where you shop,

• 27:18Pablo Torre?

  Apple Card is here to help you tackle game day. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank, USA, Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 27:36Speaker 03

  Welcome to 215 Maple Drive. We just put this property on the market.

• 27:42Speaker 04

  Love the crown molding.

• 27:44Speaker 03

  Oh, wait until you see the walk-in closets and the bathroom tile.

• 27:47Speaker 04

  Does it have Verizon FiOS? You know, 100% fiber internet.

• 27:51Speaker 03

  No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen.

• 27:55Speaker 04

  No FiOS? Yeah, no thank you.

• 27:58Speaker 03

  Don't you want to see the rest? Okay, bye-bye. Get Verizon FiOS, because when you're moving, it's 100% or nothing.

• 28:12Pablo Torre?

  The through line in every Trump world political project is that we are talking fundamentally about crony capitalism. We're not talking about a market. We're talking about the construction of contracts without other bids. We're talking about a way to funnel money from A to B to C. And in this case, if the UFC is being used in this way, and the story we are being told is, well, this is of course, an authentic friendship between Dana White and Donald Trump. This is not some operation to help...

• 28:49Pablo Torre?

  All of the crony capitalists that we are alleging, these are two friends who have always supported each other. And why can't friends do business?

• 28:57Speaker 01

  Okay, I'm so glad you brought this up. Before we talk any further, can I please address something about this?

• 29:03Pablo Torre?

  Please.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Not with you, because you ask good questions. But I have done a lot of media about this card. And there is something that is driving me bonkers. The first one, as I mentioned, was everyone getting the story wrong. The second one is I'll be asked to like describe the event. And you know, if they're asking on political terms, I'll give a political answer. If they ask on fight terms, I'll give them a fight answer. But typically, the questions are all on political terms and I'll give them an answer. And what they'll say is in response, what they'll say in response is like, well, Dana White said that, um, you know, X or Y, or that they're friends, or that this, they're gonna lose money, whatever claim it is. And I'm like, guys, let me take my glasses off here, because this is just driving me crazy. Guys.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Dana White is a fight promoter. Okay. Under no circumstance in your life, in your life, do you ever take the words of a fight promoter.

• 30:00Pablo Torre?

  Any fight promoter.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  Especially if they're good. Especially if they're good.

• 30:04Pablo Torre?

  1,000%.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  Do not.

• 30:06Pablo Torre?

  Remember what Bob Arum used to say?

• 30:08Speaker 01

  What?

• 30:08Pablo Torre?

  Yesterday, I was lying. Today, I'm telling the truth.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  Bingo. And Bob Arum, by the way, not a dumb guy, went to Harvard.

• 30:13Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  Okay, never, ever, ever, ever accept what they say at face value. Now, that's not me telling you that they are lying or that they won't be right. And sometimes they'll be really right. But what I am trying to say is truth and lies are merely a function of utility to them. Treating Dana like he is some honest interlocutor, it is so critical that people understand.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Honestly, I don't even know what ability he has to differentiate between what is false and what is not, because it's immaterial.

• 30:45Pablo Torre?

  But the bond, the friendship that has now become a formalized business partnership, that has become a public-private partnership between Dana White and Donald Trump, the history of that, we can recite the beats of it like from sheet music. Donald Trump saved the UFC early on, and according to Dana White, at various Republican national conventions, this is a debt that he has always been grateful for, and Donald Trump has been his guy for longer than any of us knew that they knew each other.

• 31:20Speaker 07

  And I wanted to show up and tell you about my friend, Donald Trump, the Donald Trump that I know.

• 31:28Speaker 07

  In 2001, my partners and I bought the UFC, and it was basically considered a blood sport. State Athletic Commission didn't support us, arenas around the world refused to host our events. Nobody took us seriously, nobody, except Donald Trump.

• 31:49Speaker 07

  Donald was the first guy that recognized the potential that we saw in the UFC and encouraged us to build our business. He hosted our first two events at his venue, he dealt with us personally, he got in the trenches with us, and he made a deal that worked for everyone. On top of that, he showed up for the fight on Saturday night and sat in the front row. Yeah, he's that guy, he shows up. Donald championed the UFC before it was popular, before it grew into a successful business, and I will always be grateful, so grateful to him, for standing with those, with us in those early days. So tonight, I stand with Donald Trump.

• 32:34Pablo Torre?

  That's the story that he tells over and over and over again.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  If you can find an article in the media prior to 2016.

• 32:44Pablo Torre?

  Prior to Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  Of Dana White acknowledging in any circumstance whatsoever, the role that Donald Trump played in helping their business. I would love to see it because Pablo, I have looked. It doesn't exist and I lived in it. It doesn't exist. They are clearly friends now and or on some level anyway. And they are clearly business associates. Obviously, they are that. But the story that they tell, and this is why I bring it up. There are just bunches of people who are just not interrogating something that I lived through, but I lived through the UFC. When Dana White got there, I lived through the UFC at The Ultimate Fighter in 2005. I lived through the rise to McGregor and Rousey. I watched all of it. Let me be as clear as I possibly can.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  Donald Trump plays [BLEEP] all role into any of it.

• 33:36Pablo Torre?

  Well, 2016, of course, if you're doing the basic math, that would be when Donald Trump becomes the president of the United States and the incentive structure around who you want to be storytelling partners with. That obviously shifts in the most extreme possible direction.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  Again, there is a kernel of it circa 2001. But in terms of like continuity all the way through, it just completely evaporates in the interim because you got to remember. So 2005, they hit paydirt. The Ultimate Fighter comes out on Spike TV. It's a monster hit. It does really great ratings, sends the sport into the next atmosphere. People often want to say it was the Forrest Griffin, Stefan Bonner fight, but it's really not true. That helped, obviously, it was a big deal. But the the ratings all season were awesome. They were really, really good. So the point I'm trying to make is Dana White was relentlessly doing media in 05 and 06 and 07 and 08 and 2009. And then they get the Fox deal in 2011. He's doing more media and more media and more media. He is asked to tell the story of the UFC's success every single time.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  I mean, all these articles all sound the same at some point, what the story of the UFC is. They don't ever identify Donald Trump at all at ever having a role, at being a part of it. It just doesn't feature ever in any conversation. How can it be that after 2016, it's the centerpiece of the conversation? People are trying to tell me what was happening at that time. I lived it. What are you gonna tell me? I was there. This is insane to me.

• 35:04Pablo Torre?

  Well, in our attempt to help fact check this premise that Donald Trump has been retconned onto the history of the UFC because the financial incentives are making it worth Dana White's while. In our effort to just try to illuminate that, it brings us to a piece of video that I had never seen before. And I would like you to introduce the set and scene.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:32Pablo Torre?

  For our audience.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there is a, I'm gonna call him filmmaker. He has been working for years, years and years and years on an MMA, sort of not just one documentary, but like a series, like a season one. Like it goes on and on. I mean, this guy's telling every story. And Bobby Rozick is the name of this director. I've known him for some time, maybe a year ago or something. He was doing a screener and in Silver Spring, Maryland, just outside where I live. He was like, come through, come, come check it out. And so you can't watch, you know, seven, eight, nine episodes. But he kind of had like an hour and a half condensed. And in there, there's an interview with Dana White. Circa 2009 is when it was explained to me. This is right around the time that Donald Trump is kind of, I mean, it's hard to call him exactly the face of Affliction MMA, but something of a prominent figure.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  Affliction MMA, it was the garish T-shirts that were everywhere in the late aughts. And they tried to, they tried to get the, into MMA at the time. And they did have some pretty big fights, it should be noted. Fedor Emelianenko, who was like the heavyweight, who, by the way, Fedor has a claim as being the best fighter UFC never signed. But in any event, Trump was, you know, he was more of a promotional figurehead than like the brains of the operation, I think even by his own estimation. I bring this all up to say, in this clip from that, from Bobby Rozick's documentary, Dana White is describing other promoters at that time who were trying to get something going.

• 36:56Speaker 07

  Other businesses fail because you got a bunch of guys that think it's cool and hip to be in the fight business and don't know a fucking thing about the fight business. It's like me getting into the movie business or something. Oh, it's cool. I'd like to sit around behind a camera and make movies. I don't know a fucking thing about making movies. You know what I mean? And at the end of the day, you got all these guys who have some money. You got, you got the Trumps, Cuban, T-shirt guys, whoever it is that have some money that want to get into it. They, they have other businesses. That's where they make their money. Do you know what I do? 24 hours a day, seven days a fucking week? Mixed martial arts. That's it. That's all we do. And we're the guys with the roadmap. We're building this thing. We're forging the way and, and doing all this stuff.

• 37:34Speaker 07

  When these guys keep popping up that they're the next competition for the UFC, it just drives me crazy. It's like saying, you know what? McDonald's makes a lot of money. A lot of people go to McDonald's. I'm gonna go head to head with McDonald's. Hey, McDonald's been in business for years. You know, it took time for them to build that business. It doesn't happen that way.

• 37:54Pablo Torre?

  Not exactly the speech Dana was giving at the RNC.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is what I mean. Like, he doesn't come out and insult him. He doesn't come out.

• 38:02Pablo Torre?

  But he dismisses the very premise.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Anybody, this is, again, this is gonna, I know to people who are gonna hear this for the first time, they're gonna think I'm hot taking this. But does this look like the kind of relationship that would be rewarded with a fight on the White House lawn? Like, this kind of simpatico togetherness in 2009? They clearly don't have that at this point.

• 38:21Pablo Torre?

  Yeah. And so the premise of when did this all get together and why?

• 38:26Pablo Torre?

  It, it seems like Dana White is quite good at knowing where the money is and what it takes to unlock that money. And so being in business with the government, with governments, yeah, that's not, that's not a story of, ah, man, my best friend for decades. I finally get to, to, to realize my dream alongside him realizing his dream. What you're seeing is a bunch of people following money.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  I feel like, like when they come back at 2016, it was not clear to the world that Trump was gonna be president. That seems like a very speculative bet. I think that there was something more uniting. At one, their relationship had probably personally, you know, gotten closer by this time. And also, I just think that he liked Trump's ideas.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  And maybe it was a long shot view in their mind. But once it became clear that Trump was on to something, that he represented a bigger political movement, and that intertwining with that political movement could prove very useful, I think that's when everything kind of really kicked into high gear about the transactionalism.

• 39:33Pablo Torre?

  It kind of feels like the White House is in Spirit Halloween after Halloween mode. Where it's like, we got some [BLEEP], we gotta move back here, and our expiration date on how long we're gonna be around doesn't look like we should count on a long-term business. So let's just, let's just try to move some product. Let's get real weird, and let's try to cash in, because it feels like if any of our regulatory authorities are awake, we shouldn't count on this going on for that much longer.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 40:09Pablo Torre?

  That is the vibe that I am getting.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  That's my overall, general worldview. It feels like this is the age of the thief.

• 40:27Speaker 03

  Welcome to 215 Maple Drive. We just put this property on the market.

• 40:33Speaker 04

  Love the crown molding.

• 40:35Speaker 03

  Oh, wait until you see the walk-in closets and the bathroom tile.

• 40:38Speaker 04

  Does it have Verizon FiOS? You know, 100% fiber internet?

• 40:42Speaker 03

  No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen.

• 40:46Speaker 04

  No FiOS? Yeah, no thank you.

• 40:49Speaker 03

  Don't you want to see the rest? Okay, bye-bye. Get Verizon FiOS, because when you're moving, it's 100% or nothing.

• 40:56Speaker 06

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• 41:34Pablo Torre?

  Beyond the aesthetics, which are, you know, again, to normies who are not steeped in this sport, they are disturbing, but really what we're seeing is a new way of doing business. A new way of doing business that happens to be, if you're paying attention to this administration, um, yeah, now very, very familiar.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  This is how Trump world works. You want to get a pardon? Buy part of the stablecoin that he runs, or donate to a million dollar a seat dinner, and then they get out after, after two months. This is how Trump world works. Trump has even said, you know, it's kind of funny, when Dana White says things like, you know, our relationship isn't transactional, Dana, Dana, every relationship with Donald Trump is transactional. Everyone, with his kids, with everything, they are all transactional. This one is certainly no different at all.

• 42:30Pablo Torre?

  UFC CEO Dana White says there is, quote, "Nothing transactional," end quote, about Trump friendship, which feels like the most egregious of all of the lies that we have been characterizing.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  How can that possibly be? How can we be talking about a guy, whether it's, whether it's meme coins, whether it's World Liberty Financial, whether it's presidential pardons, whether it's, uh, the, the UAE, whether it's, um, the, the Qatar $400 million jet, we can go on and on and on, and this is how he governs. This is the mechanism by which he do, this is how he allows Trump world to function, to say that, oh, our friendship removes me from this process, while the president is buying stock in your company and pushing your legislation, and then putting your show on his lawn, they must think we're all toddlers who will buy the first line of argument that they make.

• 43:28Pablo Torre?

  The thing that I keep on thinking about as I watch both Dana White and Donald Trump make the rounds, and what they do, of course, is they grant interviews, not to you, but they grant interviews, and, or to me, uh, and what they trade on is the idea that still there are media, there are journalists who respect the office of the president a lot more than they do.

• 43:58Pablo Torre?

  And that respectability is a one-way street. And it allows Donald Trump and Dana White to benefit from this halo effect. While they are obviously betraying the very respect that they are still, despite it all, being granted.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  They want you to limit your critique by indulging respectability politics. But then when it comes time for them to do, and I'm talking about Trump, obviously. When it comes time for them to do politics, respectability features nowhere. Heads I win, tails you lose. That is the game that they want to play, and it works.

• 44:36Pablo Torre?

  And so the concern that I have as somebody who is not as invested in MMA, but has become more than ever before curious about it, is the way in which by sheer endurance, Donald Trump is extracting similar sentiment from Adam Silver, the commissioner of the NBA.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  Right, I saw that.

• 44:56Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, we're talking about what just happened in game three, where Donald Trump shows up and Silver says he's a lifelong Knicks fan. Let me ask you too, not only, as if the Knicks and the Spurs were not enough, you have the president who's going to be in attendance tonight.

• 45:11Speaker 00

  What were the machinations in the behind the scenes there in terms of should he come to the game? Do they talk to you about, does the president wants to come to the game? How does all of that work? I found out because Jim Dolan invited him to the game and he said yes. And he's welcome to be here. I think that what makes sports so special, especially when there's so much that divides people, is it's something that we have in common and we should look for those things that we have in common and build off that. And I'll also say about President Trump, you know, I've been with the league for a long time. I ran NBA Entertainment years ago. He did an I Love Kids game spot with us. He was a fixture at NBA at Madison Square Garden. You guys remember, all of you, when you played here, not Draymond, but back in the old days,

• 45:56Speaker 00

  he had courtside seats. He was here all the time. He was at Dray.

• 45:59Pablo Torre?

  So he's a genuine Knicks fan. And so, yes, there's some inconvenience to the fans here, but one looking around this arena, it's packed. So people listen, they came early, they got through whatever extra security, which is necessary. So as I said, I think we should be using sports to create more of a sense of community with people, not less. Again, it reminds me of the conversation we just had about Trump and Dana White. Trump has been around, he's been around for photo ops, he's been around to use the sport to his own benefit. And he's not the first person to do that. But I do think he's the first person to then become president and retcon his fandom, grafted onto our memory as if it was always there,

• 46:42Pablo Torre?

  to then launder everything that he wants to accomplish. And I suppose the last thought I have is, I guess I'm glad that he still feels a need to launder.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, and what is so important is they can get up there and they can say whatever they want. But what they really need, it actually doesn't work unless not just people go along with it, but that powerful people accept the parameters of the fiction, and then demand that the rest of you follow in line. So Adam Silver on this broadcast, he's like, well, he's been a life, as you indicated, been a lifelong Knicks fan, he's always welcome here.

• 47:19Pablo Torre?

  Sports bring us together, and here is the ultimate example.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  So then if you say, well, guys, as the administration ignores thousands of court orders, they've decimated the DOJ, and you can go on down the list. Why do I have to pretend that this is some kind of noble difference between political entities that care about one another? Why do I have to pretend that this guy is not who he is? Oh, well, now you are the one.

• 47:39Pablo Torre?

  You're divisive.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  You're divisive. You're the agitator. You're the one.

• 47:43Pablo Torre?

  You're insurrecting the Capitol, actually.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  You're the Pablo Torre, official Jan Sixer. That's what you, that's what you are.

• 47:51Pablo Torre?

  That's what this podcast is.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:55Pablo Torre?

  And unfortunately, there is no fund that has been attempted to get us paid for that.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  We just do it for free.

• 47:59Pablo Torre?

  We're doing this [BLEEP] and getting possibly the worst deal out of everybody in sports media.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's not much to it. But you know, I just kind of thought about it too. Like, I don't know.

• 48:12Speaker 01

  I don't know, man. I don't know what my place is in the sport anymore. If I can be honest, I don't know. I don't know how to answer. If someone's like, whoa, where do you fit into the sport? I don't know how to answer that anymore. But, um, I just can't watch this silently. I just can't do it. I cannot. I might end up burning my, this is, I'll just admit it. There's a good chance I could end up just burning everything I've built to the ground. It's very, very possible. Um, but I refuse to indulge these fictions. I refuse. I absolutely refuse to go along with, don't you think it's great that we're partnered with this particular administration and everything they've done and everything they represent?

• 48:54Speaker 01

  And all the harms associated, can't you just be quiet and then let the party happen? Do you want to be the Karen that calls the cops to turn the music down? That's what they want to tell you. But the reality is, dude, like, I refuse. I don't, I don't know what, what ability I have. Maybe it's nothing. I will not let Donald Trump do what he's doing in this administration to my city and my sport without telling him to [bleep] off in the end. I refuse. And if I burn everything to the ground in the process, then I burn everything to the ground in the process. I will find a way to make do.

• 49:29Pablo Torre?

  Luke Thomas, as somebody who has been so far denied credentials to cover this whole event.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  I didn't apply, to be clear.

• 49:38Pablo Torre?

  I was gonna say, I think you, in terms of the efficiency of your time, I think that probably makes sense. Thank you for doing this, and I look forward to our next insurrection.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  Let's do it. Jan 7th, next time.

• 50:00Pablo Torre?

  Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Avaroma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McCray, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tumanello. Studio engineering by RG Systems, sound design by Andrew Bersick, digital strategy by Bailey Carlin and Andrew Northern, theme song, as always, by John Bravo.

• 50:22Pablo Torre?

  We'll talk to you next time.