You may have come across images of Donald Trump enjoying himself in a professional wrestling ring.If you haven’t, you’ve likely seen a video he tweeted in 2017 where he’s seen body slamming a figure with a CNN logo for a head.
The clip originates from a genuine wrestling match Trump participated in against the now disgraced former WWE owner Vince McMahon in 2007.
McMahon currently faces several sexual assault allegations and has distanced himself from the business; however, his wife, Linda McMahon, co-founder and former CEO of WWE, is leading his transition team and has recently been named Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education in the upcoming administration.
According to journalist and author Abraham Josephine Riesman, some of the skills and techniques Trump acquired from professional wrestling have contributed to his success in politics.
Riesman, known as ‘Josie’, authored ‘Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America’, which discusses how she perceives elements of professional wrestling reflected in contemporary American politics.
“It’s where he learned to engage with an audience,” Riesman told RTÉ News. “I’ve viewed clips of Trump giving speeches in the 80s, and they resemble the usual corporate, thank-you ladies and gentlemen, polite façade,” she noted.
“But when you observe him interacting with the wrestling crowd in 2007, he effortlessly feeds off their energy – it’s scripted, so he knew what to say – yet he performs with such a perfectly exaggerated disdain that the audience can’t help but get worked up.”
This kind of performance and interaction is evident today at Trump’s rallies, which he enjoys immensely, but Riesman believes the key lesson he learned was the craft of what she calls “neo-kayfabe”.
To grasp this term, one must first understand “kayfabe”, an old American carnival term.
Vince McMahon got more than he expected when Donald Trump got involved physically after signing the contract for Wrestlemania XXIII’s “Hair vs Hair” match in 2007
Professional wrestling has its roots in athletic carnival shows from the late 19th Century, where performance often took precedence over sport.
The exact linguistic origin of the term is uncertain, though it may derive from pig Latin for “be fake”, it has become synonymous with the big secret of professional wrestling – its staged nature.
Kayfabe was akin to the mafia code of pro-wrestling, mandating that wrestlers had to portray their scripted characters as real to the public at all times, fully embodying those personas to hide the fact that wrestling is scripted.
However, by the late 90s and early 2000s, the veil covering the WWF (as it was known then) had been lifted as the public became aware that it was all performance art.
In order to sustain and enhance its fan base, Vince McMahon started introducing more behind-the-scenes storylines, some with roots in reality.
For instance, the wrestling character ‘Triple H’ married female wrestler ‘Stephanie McMahon’, and the two are also married in real life.
This is what Riesman labels “neo-kayfabe”; the narratives are still fabricated, but contain elements of truth that keep the audience guessing about what’s real and what’s staged.
“All of a sudden, the audience turns into conspiracy theorists, struggling to distinguish truth from falsehood,” says Riesman.
The Trump WWE storyline known as ‘Battle of the Billionaires’ exemplifies neo-kayfabe. Trump and Vince McMahon were both billionaires in reality, but they exaggerated their personas for the storyline.
There’s a parallel between this neo-kayfabe and the disinformation that spreads rampantly on social media today, which Donald Trump has adeptly utilized.
As reported by The Washington Post, during his first presidential term, Donald Trump made 30,573 false or misleading statements.
According to Riesman, he learned a vital lesson: “If you hide a lie among a multitude of lies, you can tell people, ‘hey, you see that dirt? It’s a lie.’ But if you dig, you might uncover some truth.”
People often proclaim they “did their own research,” but in reality, they’ve merely stumbled upon the lies that have been concealed for them.
An evident illustration during Trump’s election campaign, according to Riesman, was a false claim made by his running mate JD Vance, asserting that immigrants in Ohio were consuming cats and dogs.
“When confronted about the fact that this was simply untrue, his response essentially acknowledged it was a lie. Yet it revealed a deeper emotional truth.”
A similar illustration of neo-kayfabe and disinformation occurred during Hurricane Helene in Florida.
RNC national committee member Amy Kremer shared an image of a small crying girl holding a puppy in floodwaters on social media platform X.
The photo was quickly identified as a fabricated AI-generated image, but her response was, “I don’t care where this photo originated; it doesn’t matter. It is engraved in my memory permanently. People are enduring far worse than what’s depicted in this image.”
Y’all, I don’t know where this photo came from and honestly, it doesn’t matter.
It is seared into my mind forever.
There are people going through much worse than what is shown in this pic.
So I’m leaving it because it is emblematic of the trauma and pain people are living…
— Amy Kremer (@AmyKremer) October 3, 2024
In essence, the fact that it’s fake is irrelevant because the emotions it evoked are authentic. This captures the essence of how neo-kayfabe and disinformation function.
“The sizzle is more important than the steak,” as Riesman puts it. “The sizzle entices someone to buy the steak. If the steak tastes terrible, who cares? It’s already sold.”
Whether it’s marketing actual Trump steaks or the idea of ‘Making America Great’, Trump certainly employs these reality-bending strategies that reflect wrestling’s kayfabe.
Can we attribute this to Trump’s connection with Vince McMahon and pro-wrestling? I’m not entirely convinced.
He has undoubtedly been significantly influenced by figures like Steve Bannon, his 2016 campaign manager, who has openly discussed disinformation tactics for years.
But did pro-wrestling assist Trump in refining his techniques? That seems plausible.
