Trump, the political wrestler, knows the value of entertainment
National Post, 28 January 2024
He doesn’t actually body slam anyone, but the outlandish theatre of pro wrestling is key to his style
On Tuesday evening Donald Trump won the New Hampshire Republican primary. But the more significant news arising from the Trump phenomenon took place that morning at the New York Stock Exchange, where TKO — the merged conglomerate of United Fighting Championship (UFC) and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) — rang the bell to begin trading.
The occasion was the signing of a 10-year, US$5-billion deal with Netflix to become the home of WWE’s weekly program, Raw. Now more than 30 years old, the three-hour show draws audiences big enough to justify Netflix paying US$500 million a year.
Also on Tuesday night, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith had dinner with Tucker Carlson ahead of their public event together on Wednesday. That, too, is part of the same phenomenon, emphasizing the Calgary roots of a culture that now shapes politics and news.
I have been writing since the Trump candidacy in 2015 that it is not possible to understand his appeal without understanding the cultural influence of professional wrestling. The scripted (and real) physical conflict, the outlandish storylines, the caricatures of good and evil, the insulting rhetoric, the childish nicknames, the knowledge that everyone is in on the theatre — all of this is key to the Trump style. He doesn’t actually body slam anyone, but aside from that and the ring ropes, everything else is recognizable from a wrestling card.
To trace the trajectory backwards, Trump perfected his public profile on reality television, and wrestling was the original “reality” show. The wrestling was real, the drama scripted. In turn, the ethos of wrestling went mainstream with Muhammad Ali, who made braggadocio, demeaning of opponents and racial insults — Joe Frazier, the “ugly gorilla” — into a potent and popular public persona. Ali himself acknowledged that he learned how to be Ali from Gorgeous George, the flamboyant wrestling star of the 1950s.
That wrestling would now be in a position to generate contracts at the level of the NFL and Olympics is an indication of how far the wrestlification of our culture has advanced. Trump did not create the phenomenon but he rode the wave.
Recall that Ali was present at the first Wrestlemania in 1985; Trump hosted the fourth and fifth editions at his casino in Atlantic City, and infamously was in the “battle of the billionaires” stunt at the 2007 Wrestlemania in Detroit. Trump even engaged in a little of the action himself, clotheslining WWE owner Vince McMahon outside the ring. Trump would end the segment lying prone in the ring, having been finished off by “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. He would rise from the mat; 10 years later he was president.
A key moment in wrestlification took place in 1989. Tired of being regulated (and taxed) by state athletic commissions, McMahon testified before the New Jersey state senate that professional wrestling should be exempt, because wrestling is “primarily for the purpose of providing entertainment to spectators rather than conducting a bona fide athletic contest.” McMahon got his exemption. Wresting wasn’t a sport; it was, in McMahon’s beloved neologism, “sports entertainment.”
(A lawsuit filed on Thursday accused McMahon of sex trafficking. There is a seedy underbelly to the wrestling world — not entirely unlike the shadier aspects of Trump’s career.)
The question remained: Would fans, who always knew that it was more theatre than sporting contest, keep watching now that the pretence was dropped? They did, in droves. Wrestling grew bigger than ever. And within a decade “reality television” was the biggest new entertainment trend. It turned out that speaking the truth about what was “fake” was a stroke of marketing genius.
“Sports entertainment” proved massively popular, massively lucrative and massively influential. “News entertainment” followed, with the rise of cable networks, and in due course, “politics entertainment.”
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