Dana White has claimed Donald Trump 'can't be racist' because he was friends with Michael Jackson, using the late pop star as the centrepiece of his defence during a New York radio interview this week. The UFC boss made the comments while pushing back against long-running allegations of racism aimed at the 79-year-old president.
Trump has faced accusations of racism for decades, from a 1973 US Justice Department housing discrimination lawsuit to his promotion of the birther conspiracy against Barack Obama and his harsh rhetoric about immigrants and Muslim-majority countries while in office. White, a long-time Trump ally and now chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, was pressed on that history during an appearance on The New Yorker Radio Hour with editor David Remnick, where the pair discussed White's career and his 25-year friendship with Trump.
White's Michael Jackson Defence
When Remnick asked directly whether Trump was racist, White brushed the question aside and reached for an argument that surprised even a seasoned interviewer. Trump, he said, had been close to Michael Jackson and welcomed him into his home.
White pointed to archival footage that resurfaced around the release of Michael, the 2026 biographical film, showing Trump publicly backing Jackson during earlier controversies. In the clips, Trump described Jackson as a good person and spoke warmly about the singer spending time around his family.
'These things that he's a racist and he's a N-word, and he's this and that, I mean, Donald Trump, all this stuff's coming out now,' White told Remnick.
He went on to argue that the videos of Trump defending Jackson say something about the president's character and the kind of company he kept. Jackson, he noted, 'was around his children and around his family a lot'.
The pop star rented a penthouse in Trump Tower for months in the 1990s and became a fixture in Trump's orbit. According to White, Jackson would play video games such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with a young Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, a detail he cast as evidence of trust and affection.
🇺🇸 PRESIDENT TRUMP: "I knew Michael Jackson very well, and he was a special guy. He would spend a lot of time with my kids Donald and Eric."
— Coinvo (@Coinvo) May 18, 2026
"He just loved children genuinely, he was not a child molester." pic.twitter.com/QNBn1usgZu
'I don't know if that's true,' White said of the sexual abuse accusations against Jackson, 'but I can tell you the president had a very good relationship with Michael Jackson and had Michael Jackson around his kids all the time. And you know, I defended him when that stuff was going down. So to call the guy a racist is crazy. He's not a racist'.
Jackson was acquitted of all criminal charges in a 2005 trial. But the wider debate over his conduct has never fully gone away, which is partly why Remnick challenged the logic of White's defence.
Remnick Pushes Back
Remnick did not leave the point hanging. He reminded listeners that Jackson, while 'talented' and 'brilliant', was also 'a deeply, deeply flawed human being, to say the least', and 'was abusive [from] everything we know about him'.
The point was clear. Even if Trump and Jackson were close, that friendship does not settle the question of Trump's views on race, and it certainly does not erase a record that civil rights critics have spent years condemning.
This hack from the New Yorker tells Dana White he doesn’t want to talk about Trump…
— kevin smith (@kevin_smith45) May 24, 2026
Then spends 20 minutes trying to get Dana White to say Trump is a racist.
Which he clearly isn’t pic.twitter.com/Ev1YvFskTu
Trump's critics continue to cite the 1973 discrimination lawsuit against him and his father's housing business, his promotion of birtherism, his description of some Mexican immigrants as criminals and his attacks on Black lawmakers and the Obama family. They also point to his administration's travel bans on several Muslim-majority countries as evidence of discriminatory instincts.
White responded by falling back on personal experience. He said he had not seen a recent Truth Social post in which Trump shared an image depicting Barack Obama as an ape, before declaring: 'He's not a racist. He's not a fascist. He loves this country. If he was that type of person, I never would associate with that type of a person, no matter who he was'.
It is a familiar pattern in political argument, with lived impression set against public record. White is not an official Trump spokesman, and his comments reflect his own judgement rather than any formal finding on Trump's conduct or beliefs.
UFC, Politics And Loyalty
The timing of White's defence is notable. His interview came as he prepares to bring the UFC to the White House for an event in June, a move that has already divided the mixed martial arts world.
Some former fighters, including ex-champion Ben Henderson, have called the plan a 'clown show' and a 'circus spectacle', arguing that turning the president's residence into a UFC backdrop blurs the line between sport, politics and personality.
White, though, has doubled down on his loyalty. On The New Yorker Radio Hour, he framed his stance as rooted in long acquaintance rather than policy alignment. To him, Trump's hospitality to a troubled pop star decades ago and White's own positive experiences over 25 years add up to a character reference strong enough to outweigh lawsuits, posts and executive orders.
Whether that is persuasive beyond Trump's core supporters is another matter. Many of the biggest allegations about Trump's racism, and about Jackson's behaviour, have never been settled to everyone's satisfaction, and White's interview does not provide any new evidence either way.
In the end, his defence rests on personal loyalty and a particular reading of friendship. Any broader claim that Donald Trump 'can't be racist' because of his relationship with Michael Jackson should be treated cautiously.
