From Fight Night to Loneliness: Dana White, Trump, and America’s Isolation Crisis

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Everyone's talking about protein lately, but how do you actually get enough of it? Muscle milk. Muscle milk has a great tasting new formula with no artificial sweeteners, flavors, or added colors. It's high quality, complete protein, designed to support healthy muscles with fewer ingredients than the previous formula and 26 to 42 grams of protein. But when you're stuck in meetings or need a post workout recovery, available in chocolate, vanilla cream, cookies and cream, and strawberries and cream, try the new great tasting muscle milk today. Available in stores nationwide. Muscle milk, protein for all.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:30)
Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start. Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin, or what that clunking sound from your dryer is. With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today.
Ditch the clowns on the left.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:52)
And the jokers on the right.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:54)
And join Michael Smerconish right here, in the middle.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:58)
This is The Smerconish Podcast. For Independent Minds.

**Michael Smerconish** (1:01)
This is going to be quite a weekend for viewing of major events, with all the World Cup action taking place and the UFC activity on the south lawn of the White House. During the commercial break, I was just looking at a story that CNN has just posted inside the highly complex preparation for Trump's UFC 60 million for staging. This paragraph, The UFC will host a press conference and faceoffs at the Lincoln Memorial on Friday and a ceremonial participant weigh in and other events on Saturday at the Ellipse before the main event at the White House lawn takes place on Sunday. Entertainment per an hour by hour schedule includes military bands, a performance by Zach Brown Band, a Golden Knights flyover, the Clydesdales, the fight card itself and a 10 minute fireworks finale. All the handiwork of Dana White.
And Dana White is the feature of a Time Magazine cover story that our next guest authored. Sean Gregory is senior sports correspondent at Time. His work has been cited in the annual Best Americans Sports Writing Anthology, Nine Different Times. Sean, thank you so much for being here.

**Sean Gregory** (2:19)
Thank you, Michael. Great to be here.

**Michael Smerconish** (2:20)
I thought your piece was really great, really insightful. Let me just read one graph, if I may.
In his quarter century running the UFC, White, Dana White, has staged fights on five continents. Several have drawn more than 50,000 attendees, but he's never faced expectations quite like this. Beyond variables like extreme weather that are out of his control, the logistical and security challenges are acute, especially in the wake of the shooting at the White House Correspondence Center in April. DC will be on high alert, all eyes trained on White.
But true to form, the man who despises showing frailty projects only confidence. I don't sleep a lot, but it's not because I'm worried about anything, says White. It's because my life is so f-ing awesome. You visited Dana White inside his Las Vegas offices. Take us in, make us a fly on the wall. What's the vibe and what does that place look like?

**Sean Gregory** (3:21)
Yeah, it's a very masculine vibe, to say the least. Then that quote, and I think the story, it's Dana White being Dana White. Take it or leave it, he's going to be the guy who's super confident, not afraid to use some foul language and just strut his stuff. But yeah, inside the office, it's a big office in Vegas, and there's an X-rated picture on the wall, near his conference room table, a Japanese photograph that he imported. There are samurai swords, there are AK-47s pistols with Bible covers on them, and his statement was that the Bible has caused more violence than the actual, is more responsible for killing more people than the actual guns. He's an atheist, clearly, and so he's proudly, he shows this stuff off. He's like, yeah, if you're going to say this is toxic masculinity, so be it. I'm unapologetically masculine. And this fight represents some of the cultural shifts we've seen in the country over the last eight years. And that really capped, you know, I came to a crescendo in 2024, the election, and now is really coming to a peak in 2026 with this fight.

**Michael Smerconish** (4:41)
So critics would have to give him props for being a true American Horatio Alger story, right? I mean, he's a Boston bellhop when he's around 19