Donald Trump on Monday made a sudden and rare appearance in the White House briefing room, tag-teaming with his friend, UFC President Dana White, and taking questions from the press corps on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Iran war and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
The president has faced growing scrutiny since Republicans lost control of Congress in a crushing midterm election defeat nearly a week ago. To help take on the press during a blistering news cycle, Trump brought White into the briefing room after publicly offering him the vacant job of White House press secretary and then claiming it was just a joke after White was reported to have turned it down.
“I thought I'd bring Dane here because he loves the idea and I love the idea. The only thing is, we have other things we have to think about,” Trump told reporters Monday.
White was shocked when reporters actually started asking him questions.
It started with a softball from one reporter who asked whether Trump or his Democratic rival, former President Joe Biden, would win in a UFC cage match. White replied with a compliment to Trump, calling him “the toughest, most resilient human being that I’ve ever met in my entire life.”
When asked whether White declined the press secretary job, the UFC chief said, “I don’t tell the president ‘no’ to anything.”
The role, which was once filled by Karoline Leavitt before she left at the end of August to spend more time with her family, was very briefly filled by Katie Zacharia, but she only lasted five days on the job.
On Monday, Trump explained his decision to offer White a spot at the lectern: “We were having a very bad press day...I don’t know why; I thought of his name. He’s been my friend for a long time. I said, ‘You know, I think I'm going to get Dana White to be my new press secretary.’ I said it to a group of the press, and that was it. I was sort of kidding.”
Trump claimed the Iran war, which was a major factor in the GOP’s midterm shellacking after causing gas prices to soar, will be ending soon.
One reporter asked the president Thursday why not just declare the Iran war over now, given that he already claimed to have stopped the Middle Eastern country from having a nuclear weapon — his main objective of the conflict.
“We have some great allies there, and we have to make sure they're not hurt, and they would be hurt. They are right now a lot safer than they were six months ago, because Iran's been very much decapitated,” Trump said.
“But they're still the bully of the Middle East a little bit, and I see that. We want to make sure they're okay. We want to make sure it's a long-term solution, not just a short-term.”
Trump also defended Hegseth, who has been unwavering in his support of the war, as Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican and staunch critic of the president, reintroduced articles of impeachment against the Pentagon chief.
The articles published Monday accuse Hegseth of “waging the Iran war despite no declaration of war, statutory authorization, attack on the United States, or imminent threat,” among other allegations.
Trump called Massie a “stone-cold loser” and then suggested that Hegseth is “winning the war” in Iran, which has raged on for more than eight months.
“He's certainly winning the war,” Trump said. “Iran would love to make a deal, and they've been obliterated.”
Trump was repeatedly asked about a newly revealed alleged affair that Huang, one of the president’s allies in the AI industry, had with a suspected Chinese spy. Huang admitted in a message to his company that he was “unfaithful to my wife” and took "full responsibility" for his actions.
It came afterThe New York Times reported that Huang had formed a close relationship with Alice Huang, a Chinese executive at a Singapore-based data center that U.S. officials believe was feeding information to Beijing.
Nvidia announced Sunday that its board was opening an investigation “in light of recent reporting that founder and CEO Jensen Huang has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort.”
Trump said he was “amazed” by the news “because I view him as a very high quality person. I've known him a long time,” adding, “I hope there's no problem. I believe he's suffering greatly.”
The president said he spoke with Huang earlier Thursday, and the executive said he had “absolutely no idea that the person in question was a spy.”
When asked if he knew about Huang’s ties to a suspected Chinese spy when he visited Beijing in May, Trump said, “No, I didn’t hear about it then.”
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