All week, there’s been a noticeable pattern in Donald Trump coverage from mainstream and semi-mainstream media: Linking his theatrics and showmanship on the presidential campaign trail to the theatrics of pro wrestling. As you may remember, Trump has been involved with WWE on and off for over a quarter century, first by paying a site fee to host WrestleMania IV and V and his Atlantic City casino. In 2007, putting his hair against Vince McMahon’s at WrestleMania 23 led to the most bought WrestleMania worldwide in traditional pay-per-view history. Later, he did a brief angle where he bought the Raw brand and finally went into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2013.
The latest link comes from TMZ, who talked to Virgil of all people about Trump. They wrote that he said “he met Donald at WWE events in the ’80s and ’90s, and claims the business mogul picked his brain for tips on being a great showman.” TMZ also quoted him directly as saying that “People like the spectacle. People want to see confidence. He is confident just like a wrestler. […] All people want to know is that they can pay the bills and live a good life. They want confidence they can eat.”
Trump got in on it himself after CNN’s Republican debate Thursday, saying that “Vince McMahon would’ve loved it, because that was a WWE kind of a thing, Actually a couple of them came up and they said, ‘you know what Donald—can I hit you so that I can get a little bit more time?’’ Because some of these guys, I felt badly—a lot of them are friends of mine and they got, they got no air time last night.”
Back on Monday, Judd Legum of ThinkProgress tried to figure out Trump’s theatrics by putting them in the context of French philosopher Roland Barthes’ famous essay about pro wrestling. He cited quotes like this one:
It is obvious that at such a pitch, it no longer matters whether the passion is genuine or not. What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself. There is no more a problem of truth in wrestling than in the theater.
Given the type of statements and bombast that are getting Trump attention, this probably won’t end any time soon.
