Pat McAfee live from the White House? That’s going to be must-watch TV.
President Donald Trump is obviously familiar with The Pat McAfee Show. On Veteran’s Day last year, the president called into the show for a wide-ranging conversation that touched on everything from the VA to fixing NIL and Trump’s hatred for the new NFL kickoff rules.
Until this week though, the popular ESPN personality and host of College GameDay had never met Trump in person…but when he finally got his opportunity, he used it to put in a request to the president.
On his show today, Pat was joined by Dana White, the CEO of UFC and a close friend of Trump. The two spoke about McAfee getting invited to the presidential suite during the national championship game on Monday, while White was watching the game alongside Trump.
McAfee was at Hard Rock Stadium calling the game for an ESPN alternate broadcast when the invite came in through the network’s vice president, Mike Foss, to meet with Trump:
“I’m literally calling the game from the field, okay? So we get a text from Secret Service. Mike Foss gets a text from Secret Service that goes, ‘Hey, the president would like to invite Pat up to his suite if he has time. 8:15 would be good.’
And Mike Foss comes up to me and goes, ‘Hey, the president would like you to potentially come up to the suite if you want to. 8:15.’ I look at the clock… It was like 8:10.
I was like, is there any other times or whatever? So they handle it. They’re like, ‘Halftime. Would you like to go up there at halftime?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, sweet. That’ll be cool.’
So then Secret Service has this thing set up basically for me to sprint from where I’m at up into there to get this entire thing to go in. And as soon as I walk in, it’s like, holy s—. I literally just got done calling this, sprint through the entire thousands of people. And then I get in there and it’s like, holy hell, what is this?”
When it was finally his chance to talk to the president, he expressed his appreciation to Trump for appearing on his show a couple months ago – and the response was pure Trump:
“I go, ‘Mr. President thank you so much for coming on the show, we’re obviously very grateful, it was huge.’
And he immediately goes, ‘I heard it did well,’ like obviously goes right into it.”
McAfee then saw his chance to ask Trump for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: Doing his show live from the White House during the UFC fight scheduled to take place on the lawn on June 14, 2026 as part of America’s 250th birthday celebration.
“I said to him, I’m like, ‘Hey, would love to be able to do show from White House for the fight or whatever.’ And he goes, ‘Really?’ And I go, ‘Good?’ And he goes, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ And then he shakes the hand. I hope somebody got that.”
He then acknowledged how wild the whole thing is:
“Live from the White House is an absurd thing. Just as a program that started in the basement.”
Can’t imagine how wild it’s going to be to see Pat McAfee doing his show on the White House lawn. What a time to be alive.
