He spent far less time on WWE than he did on the Apprentice but listening to the crowd chanting “Donald” here leaves me curious about how much this shaped his approach to performance. How they cheer when he says that “to me they look like a very smart group of people”. There’s a direct relationship to the crowd here which he lacked on TV. It’s also striking how naturally kayfabe comes to him, as if he had been doing this for years. I find it easy to imagine that Trump genuinely enjoys the poetics of wrestling, the physical performance, the bright lights and the simplistically evocative face/heel storylines.
It would be interesting to compare his WWE appearance to the Apprentice which he’s clearly drawing on here. Did it help him condense and purify the role, distill its core elements in a way that could be transplanted directly into politics? Could he have built the charismatic link with a significant section of the MAGA base, which for avoidance of doubt I do think is clearly pre-fascist in its scale and implications, without this wrestling persona? WWE claim almost 90 million wrestling fans in the US which, even if a corporate exaggeration, highlights how prominent wrestling is culturally within American society.
Yet it’s often seen as something peripheral, inane and explicable in spite of its continued growth, influence and visibility. Much like Trump himself. It’s worth watching the second video through to the end, where Trump joyous leads a crowd in act of public humiliation predicated on emasculation through forced head shaving. To suggest a parallel to wrestling isn’t to trivialise the danger Trump poses, it’s to explore how dangerous the trivialities of wrestling can be when their poetics are transferred into political reality.
Mark Carrigan 