Dana White, CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and a close Donald Trump supporter, will join Meta’s board of directors in yet another signal that the company is moving to further align itself with the incoming administration.
The announcement came Monday and follows news last week that Republican Joel Kaplan would become Meta’s chief global affairs officer, and that the company would donate $1 million toward Trump’s inauguration.
“Dana is the President and CEO of UFC, and he has built it into one of the most valuable, fastest growing, and most popular sports enterprises in the world,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post. “I've admired him as an entrepreneur and his ability to build such a beloved brand.”
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White, a longtime Trump ally who campaigned for him in 2016 and delivered an impassioned speech at the Republican National Convention, also played a critical role in the president-elect’s campaign strategy, according to The Washington Post. White is credited with “encouraging him to work with a new generation of online influencers who appealed to men under 35,” the publication reported.
Zuckerberg is a mixed martial arts fan, podcaster and tech journalist Kara Swisher told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Monday. “So that may be that.”
“I call it feats of servitude,” Swisher said of tech billionaires including Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos cozying up to Trump. “Not just going down to Mar-A-Lago but other actions.” She added: “You know I think they’re doing various things they can do to kiss up to Trump.”
