Dana White reveals how he got invited to infamous dinner with President Donald Trump and Bill Maher

A recent dinner that musician Kid Rock arranged between President Donald Trump and comedian Bill Maher made a lot of headlines thanks to the volatile relationship they’ve shared over the years, but how exactly did UFC CEO Dana White end up in that same meeting?

While White’s friendship with Trump is well-documented — the president even attended UFC 314 this past weekend in Miami — he actually had no real connection to this dinner outside of knowing Kid Rock and actually appearing on Maher’s Club Random podcast in the past. It turns out White’s invitation came as a result of Trump and Maher taking such ugly shots at each other over the years that the Emmy-nominated musician decided he needed someone else in the room with him.

“Kid Rock is blowing my phone up and he’s like ‘I need some help — I just got Bill Maher and Donald Trump to have dinner together, and if this thing goes south, I don’t want to be there by myself, will you fly out here?’” White revealed when speaking to Fox News.

Considering Trump once filed a $5 million lawsuit against Maher back in 2013 after he promised to donate that same sum to charity if the future president could prove he was not the son of an orangutan, Kid Rock’s concerns were probably not unfounded.

But despite all the bad blood between them in the past, White says the dinner between Trump and Maher was actually very cordial, and he even got a memento from the encounter that he plans on displaying in his UFC office.

“So the first thing that happens is Bill Maher walks into the Oval office and me and the president were in there and he has a piece of paper with every name that the president has called him over the last however many years,” White revealed. “It was like 100 names on this list and it was hilarious.

“Thank god he had two of them, because I had them both sign it, and I’m getting it framed and hanging it in my office.”

Maher addressed that moment on his HBO series Real Time this past Friday when the long list of insults was presented to the president as an icebreaker of sorts and it apparently worked.

“I brought this to the White House because I wanted him to sign it, which he did,” Maher said. “Which he did, with good humor, and I know as I say that, millions of liberal sphincters just tightened. Oh my god, Bill, are you gonna say something nice about him? What I’m gonna do is report exactly what happened. You decide what you think about it.”

White says for the most part he was just a fly on the wall during the dinner while Trump and Maher spoke about various issues, but he says the meeting was actually a great experience overall.

“I think the coolest thing about that meeting and that dinner was two guys who have not liked each other for a very long time, two guys who have many opposing views got together and sat down and talked,” White said.

“They talked about a lot of things they agree on and a lot of things they disagree on but Kid Rock and I always say … nobody walks into a meeting or a dinner with Donald Trump and walks out and doesn’t like him. It’s impossible, and if you say you don’t, you’re lying.”

He wasn’t the center of attention at the meeting, but White says that he still enjoyed a funny exchange with Maher after he first showed up to the White House.

The UFC CEO revealed that he rarely dresses up when he’s hanging out with Trump, but Maher showed up wearing a full suit while taking a crack at White for not doing the same.

“First of all, the president is all over me, all the time because I don’t wear a suit when I go to these things,” White said. “Bill Maher walks into the Oval office, and he’s like ‘there’s no way in hell I was showing up without a suit on’ and I didn’t have a suit on. Bill Maher looks and me and goes ‘this is definitely from [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy collection.’ It was hilarious. It was funny. It was fun.

“There was a lot of really good and smart conversation that went back and forth between him and the president and Kid Rock and I just sort of sat there and let those two have their time together. It was awesome.”

During his recap of the event, Maher admitted that he left the dinner with a much different impression of Trump from the person he sees on TV or reacting on social media but that doesn’t necessarily means he’s going to agree with his politics.

White said much the same but at least getting those two in a room together might bridge a gap between two different ideologies that would never happen if they just sniped at each other through interviews and social media.

“That’s what needs to happen,” White said. “People with opposing views instead of everybody hating each other, get together, talk, disagree.

“It’s OK to disagree. There’s never going to be a case where you agree with everything that anybody says, your friends, your family and definitely not the President of the United States. It doesn’t mean you have to hate each other.”