The Octagon Briefing Room

Trump wants fighters to “defend us against the Lunatic Left.” Meanwhile, tankers are burning in Hormuz.

Good morning! The White House press briefing room may become an octagon.

Dana White has spent twenty-five years making sure everyone knows exactly who’s fighting, when, and whether the bout is on. Donald Trump offered him the White House press secretary’s job, and by dinnertime the answer was yes, no, and “see you Monday.”

At 1:40 p.m. Eastern on Saturday, Trump announced on Truth Social that “the Great Dana White, a violent Fighter and Warrior,” had been offered the job of “Press Secretary of the United States.” White reposted it to Instagram with an image of himself at a lectern and the caption “On to the next chapter.” A few hours later, a source told CNN he’d turned it down. A few hours after that, White told reporters at a boxing event in London that he was flying to Washington that night for a meeting with the president on Monday.

The White House couldn’t settle it either. One aide told CNN the president was joking. Communications director Steven Cheung reposted the offer with “Hell yeah!” Polymarket opened a book on it.

For a full day, newsrooms from Washington to London parsed an Instagram caption, a Truth Social post and a vague promise of a Monday meeting with the intensity of Cold War Kremlinologists. Sports reporters found themselves covering a White House personnel decision, political reporters suddenly needed to know who Kayla Harrison is (the president spelled it “Harris”), and a role once held by Karoline Leavitt became the hottest open slot on the card. All of this for a job whose last occupant lasted five days.

The post itself rewards a close read. There is no such office as “Press Secretary of the United States.” White is a promoter and an executive, not a “violent Fighter.” The six “assistants” Trump wants him to bring along to “defend us against the Lunatic Left” include two Russians from Dagestan and a Brazilian. Trump flagged their foreign origins himself (“even though some are not from our Country”), which raises the delightful possibility of the new chief of staff, Stephen Miller, architect of Trump’s original Muslim travel ban, overseeing a press operation assisted by two devout Muslim fighters from Dagestan.

One of the fighter photos even carries an energy-drink advertisement. And in Trump’s accompanying collage, White stands behind a lectern bearing the presidential seal, rather than the ordinary White House briefing-room insignia. Apparently, we’re skipping the press secretary’s office and heading straight for the presidency.

The foreign press has been having a wonderful time with Trump’s post-election predicament, although the Russians have rather different reasons for paying attention. In Moscow, the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg recalled the old Soviet joke: an American brags that he can stand in Washington and shout “down with the U.S. president” without being arrested, and the Russian replies that he can do the same in Red Square. This week Russian newspapers proved the punchline, tearing into Trump in ways they would never dare with Putin. Moskovsky Komsomolets called him a diminished figure. Another headline diagnosed “post-Trumpatic disorder.”

In London, a pair of British radio hosts spent a podcast segment imagining how it happened. Their theory: the departing chief of staff, Susie Wiles, left behind a list of press secretary candidates that included Dana White, the former Pentagon spokesperson from Trump’s first term. Trump saw the name, thought of the cage-fight guy, and posted. There’s no evidence that any of this happened, but that’s hardly the point. Professional satirists are now writing fan fiction that’s barely stranger than the source material.

It stays funny right up until you check what else happened on Saturday.

Hours after the president posted fighter photos to fill his press office, Iranian state media reported blasts at several sites across southern Iran, Qeshm Island among them. On Sunday, Iranian authorities reported that two oil tankers had struck mines and a third had caught fire near the Strait of Hormuz. The circumstances remained unverified. CENTCOM announced Task Force Iron Gate, a new effort to disrupt Iranian weapons shipments and sanctioned trade along its land borders and across the Caspian Sea, extending American efforts beyond a naval blockade already months old. The Houthis fired missiles at Riyadh; debris from an intercepted projectile hit a Saudi Aramco building. Israel’s defense minister declared the mission in Iran “not yet complete.” Gulf stock markets slipped while traders waited to see what Trump does next.

The man they’re waiting on spent Friday night telling reporters this isn’t a war. “It can’t be a war when for 5 months nobody was hurt, killed, or anything else,” he said. The Pentagon’s own count stands at 23 American service members dead and 865 wounded. More than half of those wounds occurred during the renewed fighting that began in July. Asked about reported strikes on Qeshm that day, he said, “I don’t want to talk about it,” then described knocking out “a little bit of an anti-aircraft device” anyway. A few minutes later, while boasting about American control of the Strait of Hormuz, he offered another possible description of the U.S. military’s role: “maybe an occupier.”

It’s easy to see why the press secretary’s job has been hard to fill. Whoever takes it will be asked how the president plans to get out of a war he insists isn’t a war.

Congress has already passed an Iran war-powers resolution through both chambers, directing the withdrawal of American forces from unauthorized hostilities. It wasn’t legally binding, and the military operations continued.

The negotiations are, in a word, stuck. As one analyst explained to Al Jazeera, Washington wants a simultaneous agreement covering the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, renewed nuclear inspections and reductions in Iran’s highly enriched uranium. Tehran wants a step-by-step arrangement, with the blockade, sanctions and frozen assets all on the table. Israel is trying to assemble a new government while its defense minister promises more “preemptive action.” Qatar is still mediating.

Moscow, meanwhile, is watching for its own reasons. Beneath the mockery, the Russian press coverage had a quieter strand: some commentators worried aloud that a weakened Trump is bad news for Russia, because this particular president has been good for it. The biggest photo in Friday’s government paper, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, was Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev at the White House with Melania Trump. Dmitriev then got a private meeting with the president. The Ukrainian delegation didn’t.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, U.S.-brokered talks on Ukraine resume in Abu Dhabi. The administration is attempting to negotiate an end to Russia’s war while struggling to find a way out of its own.

None of that gets easier with a lame-duck president, a new chief of staff who has called the opposition party “a domestic extremist organization,” and a press office apparently auditioning cage fighters.

Monday is shaping up as a double bill. Dana White has his meeting at the White House. On the same day, Republican Thomas Massie plans to revive eight articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, potentially forcing a House vote this week. Among the charges are alleged violations of the 1973 War Powers Resolution in Iran. On Sunday, Hakeem Jeffries told ABC he’s a “hard yes” and blamed Hegseth for a “reckless and costly war of choice in Iran.”

One man may get the podium. The other may face an impeachment vote over the war that podium will have to explain.

Laugh at the Dana White saga. It earned it, and the rest of the world is laughing too. But keep one eye on Massie’s impeachment effort. If Democrats vote together, a handful of House Republicans could determine whether Massie’s effort advances while the old majority is still seated. Those Republicans just watched their party lose both chambers in an election shaped by the Iran war, soaring prices and demands for accountability. A call to your representative this week is worth more than a dozen memes.

The UFC requires a signed contract, a public weigh-in and a commission’s approval before anyone throws a punch. In the cage, at least, everyone agrees when the fight starts. In Iran, nobody in this White House can tell you when it ends.